


Wearing My Smile

by annaclarue



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, And other depressing shit, Angst, Childhood Friends, Coming of Age, Demisexuality, Depression, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, I hurt my babies, Letters, M/M, Makes me want to punch myself in the face, Music, Neglect, Physical Abuse, Slow Burn, Suicide, Why am I doing this to myself?, Writhe in pain with me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:40:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 68,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23605450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annaclarue/pseuds/annaclarue
Summary: "I wondered if you'd ever thought that the name your parents had given you felt like sharp knife twisting through your heart in its prayer. I'd never asked you that before, now I'd never get to."Having been together since forever, Roo struggles in the wake of his best friend's, Sam, suicide and what it means to be the remaining half. Nine months later, Roo is writing down his last letter for Sam before finally leaving his hometown for good.(Word count: 67,000+)*Mature content tag for moderate cursing, graphic violence, and sexual scenes. While the characters are mostly in their teens, I recommend this book for people above eighteen due to difficult topic and most likely triggering scenes. It's very character-driven so it gets slow sometimes.*
Relationships: Rumon White/Samson Brown
Kudos: 4





	1. Title and Dedication

**Author's Note:**

> The story starts at Chapter 2.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoy writing it (I mean, if you enjoy being in pain, that is) (lmao)

**Title Page**

**Wearing My Smile**  
by  
Anna C. La Rue

Synopsis:  
_Having been together since forever, Roo struggles in the wake of his best friend's, Sam, suicide and what it means to be the remaining half. Nine month later, Roo is writing down his last letter for Sam before finally leaving his hometown for good._

*

**Copyright and Disclaimer**

Copyright © 2019 by Anna C. La Rue (@annaclarue or @larueannc).   
All rights reserved. 

No part of this story may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, editing, translating, or manipulating without written permission from the author.

Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe you are reading or find this story at some other websites under different names beside **Anna C. La Rue** or **annaclarue** or **larueannc** , please notify it immediately to the author.

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

*

**Dedication Page**

For my best friends who had been the Roo for half of my life.

I could say I was a difficult person,   
but you'd only tell me you liked me difficult.

*


	2. EPIGRAPH

_I run after him, oh,_

_Sam, the boy wolf,_

_how sad he howls._

_He sings a song,_

_song lost one knows._

_Furious storms_

_—these emotions_

_I cannot douse as_

_dear, dear Sam, his wail_

_screams ignored vows._

_His voice tells me:_

_it cries, it shouts._

_And right before me_

_he crumbles,_

_crumbles,_

_crumbles._


	3. PART I

**PART I**  
Radiant and Blinding Sun

*

**Saturday, December 15th, 2007**

I DON'T KNOW WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK, but I remember agreeing with you when you told me several times that death was easy because it really is. I didn't know what you truly meant at the time, not really, but I knew it was true even though I did not comprehend it fully. At least not until I screamed my voice hoarse begging you not to pull the trigger, but you did anyway.

If someone were to ask me what the point of this letter was, I would tell them there was no point. This is just me, your old friend Roo, talking to you because I'm missing you like I'd lost one of my limbs and I don't quite know how to function without it. I keep picturing you in an alternate universe where you'd still come into my house as you would every single day of our entire childhood, talking, listening, and maybe, waiting for me to come back to you again. 

Nine months ago, your funeral had been overwhelming. Not many people came, but I suppose you wouldn't need many to come anyway—only ones who mattered. I came. My family, your family, Damian, and Penny. I think that was all you wanted. We had always kept to ourselves, after all, two members of our tiny circle of two. Of a sun and a little seal. Sam. Samson. I wondered if you'd ever thought that the name your parents had given you felt like sharp knife twisting through your heart in its prayer. I'd never asked you that before, now I'd never get to.

Maybe I'm writing this as a long reply of the last letter you'd left me long ago. One you put on my refrigerator like an unremarkable note you left me every once in a while. The one in which you wrote, _I'm sorry I'm a stone and I keep on dragging you down to drown with me_ , to which I could reply with pages and pages of: _I don't care if you're a stone, you're my fucking stone, please just come back to me, please_ , that I had never gotten to write down, because there was no point in asking for something that was no longer there, was there?

I don't even know if suicide victim's souls go somewhere. I just hope that they do—that you do. I can't imagine you living inside a limbo, all alone for eternity. You said to me once that you loved being alone, but I couldn't stand the thought of you being lonelier than you'd been when you raised up your gun and put it inside your mouth.

For a long time, I'd felt like I have failed you somehow. Even though my father, Luce—my older sister—and my therapist had told me that I wasn't to blame, I couldn't help myself. You were screaming the whole time and I didn't listen. 

I know what you'd say. If you were here, you'd probably tell me to get over this and move on already. I swear, Sam, I swear I would. I'm writing this because I'll be leaving soon. I will get out from this place, leaving everything behind like I know you'd want me to. It just doesn't feel right for me not talk about it with you first since we always talked about everything. 

And I want to. I want to tell you everything. I want to tell you about my dreams and my thoughts the way we used to talk every day. Most of all I want to listen to you talk. I want to listen to you as you laugh. How your voice turns soft and low when it's just us. How you joke. How you always understand what I'm trying to say, but then I realize now that there isn't you to talk about things with anymore. My memories of you are a curse that plays in loop inside my mind.

So, give me this. I'm going to write it all down here—our conversations and the days we had together. It will probably take me a week or two, but I have time. I will make time. You'd tell me it's a waste of time, but this is my promise to you: after this, there will be no more. After this, I will leave you behind, buried underneath the tree on my backyard along with the time capsule we'd never gotten a chance to open when we are twenty-one like we'd originally intended to.

Have you ever felt loss, Sam? I'm sure you have. It's a crushing, heavy thing. I don't blame you for wanting to stop it. I want it to stop, too. I understand it enough now. I just wish you didn't have to leave me behind in the process.

*

**Saturday, April 7th, 2007**

Your mom came to my house that morning after your funeral and she just started bawling. 

She told me and my sister and my father the story behind her self-destructive drunkenness. How she understood the whole time she was a danger to herself. And I was this close— _this close_ , Sam—from completely losing it. I wanted to fucking yell at her, you know? Because sure, she knew she was being self-destructive and a danger. She was like that because of her upbringing and messed-up life, and all I wanted to say was: _so what?_ So fucking what? She was wrong when she thought she was the only one being affected because didn’t she take part in ruining you? She ruined what was left of you a few years before then, somehow, she just walked up to me, the witness of your suffering, and confessed the whole fucking idiotic excuses of being a horrible fucking parent without accepting the fact that she had ruined you. 

I wanted to hurt her, Sam. I wanted to hurt her so much it drove me crazy because that was not me. I don't hurt people, wasn’t that what you used to say to me? You'd say to me again and again, it's not in me, it's your job, you're the violent one, and yet I wanted to hurt her because she took you away and in return, you took yourself away from life and it wrecked me. 

It wrecked me so bad not to have you here to listen to me talking anymore, or to talk to me or to sit by me on the couch in front of my house's television while I kiss you softly on the lips without saying anything, because nothing else is fine but this, us, being together, still makes it alright. There would be no more late night rendezvous, late dinner, watching soccer game in a stadium next town over, smoking at the backyard looking at stars in a clear night sky, talking about conspiracy theories, laughing at silly videos online, trash-talking bad movies, no more anything. 

There would be nothing, Sam. What’s going to be an easier way of coping other than blaming other people from taking you away? What's going to be easier than blaming your mother, who let that violent man who shared your blood beat you up black and blue every time he had a little more than a bottle of whiskey to drink? What's going to be easier than blaming this frail woman who felt sorry for making herself deaf and blind only after you're gone?

After the stupid confession, she raised up her head, wiped the tears with the sheets of tissue Luce had fetched for her. She told us she had already filed for a divorce and it was in progress. I didn't say anything, but my father, the better person like he had always been, told her it was the right thing to do. I added spitefully in my mind that it _was_. It was the right thing to do—only a few days, weeks, months, years too late.

Except, we both knew this wasn't about you at all, was it? It was all about her, what it would do to her. This kind of selfishness, how could you ever stand it, Sam? How could you stand all the blows and the painful words, coming back home to this every day, staying even as I saw how exhausted you were? How could you ever love them at all? I remember asking you this once and you said to me wearily, “I can't help it, Roo. They're all I have.” And I was angry at you. I hated those words for coming out of your mouth. I despise it even now because you had me, Sam. I swear you'd always had me, and yet, still, you didn't know.

She looked at me and said to me. Have you got any idea what she told me, Sam? She told me, “I forgive you, Roo, for influencing my son in such way. I didn't like it, but I understand now that you both must have been lonely. Were there more girls around, you both would have gone for them, I'm sure. I'm just sad he didn't get the chance. He seemed happy in his last months, though. So, I thank you.” and then there was this loud rushing sound inside my ears, like waves hitting the rocks in the middle of a mean storm. I couldn't comprehend past the fact that she thought that I'd turned your sexuality because she was too busy wasting her years getting drunk and high. 

So, I stood from my seat, took her by the hand and led her quietly to the front porch. I smiled at her sweetly and closed the door calmly at her face. She didn't say anything, she only looked confused, but I didn't care much since I was trembling with rage the whole time. Luce knew this, that was why soon after I felt her arms around me, and I breathed loudly on her shoulder because I was _furious_. You'd told me once that it didn't matter how long you stayed here, your parents would never understand, and I remember telling you to give them time, but now I start to think that maybe you were right. That maybe my positive conviction regarding your parents has been a stupid faith based on nothing. I was angry, so angry because even though everything else was shit, at least I wanted to prove to you that they could redeem themselves if they wanted to.

Perhaps you're right, Sam. Perhaps you were always right and you knew this even before you decided to go for good. It is all just so fucking sad. 

*

**Friday, January 23rd, 1998**

Throughout our childhood and early teen years, when people asked us when we'd started to become friends, you'd crack up. You'd grin at me and say, “Dude, you've got to tell them!” and I suppose I could see why you thought of this as hilarious. I could only remember it as something horrible, but I told them anyway. 

Remember, Sam? Your family just moved in that house across from mine where an enormous mango tree sat with its branches so wide they covered up half of our street. It was the biggest tree there. You climbed painstakingly, your parents were nowhere to be found, and I found myself worried. Curious but worried, because you could have fallen and who were going to catch you then? 

You looked so serious, you had this intense single-mindedness even then. But I suppose single-mindedly trying to climb a tree is much better than single-mindedly trying to destroy yourself, so I should have thanked my lucky stars at the time. I couldn't have, of course, but as I always used to tell you, it is nice to dream. God knows I dreamed of that first day so many times over the years, amongst other things—you know what.

I watched you, your blond hair glinted in the sun. It's what I do, I always watch things. I don't participate, and everyone in my family has told me over and over that being in love with silence is not always healthy, but they say that because they don't get it. Not like you did. You always got it, because that was what you call us: a lone wolf. 

I always used to disagree with that even though I didn't say anything. I knew I wasn't one, but you. You were a lone wolf, Sam. You were alone because you drove yourself away from your pack willingly. I was in your pack, I wanted to stay there, I swear, but eventually you left me because I know it was in your blood. It was a calling that I've known for a long time. You had this hostile urge to get away. You always had it and I understood it, but that was the thing: I didn't understand how much you wanted to get away, that you'd do absolutely anything to escape.

Then you fell with nobody beneath to catch you before you touched the ground. I could say something like, _I should have known, I should have gone there because my intuition is rarely ever wrong._ Of course you'd fall; we were eight, it was a _huge-ass_ tree. I ran to you and yelled until your out-of-their-minds-drunk parents came out and called the ambulance. I mean, I should have seen it right there, their failure of being an actual pair of parents, but I was still so little and I would finally understand it by the end of my middle school year. It was too late by then; you were already so bitter.

I saw you again with a cast on your left arm the next day. I was sitting on my front porch, reading encyclopedia about world's mythology, when you strolled to me shyly. All alone. You cleared your throat, you said, “Thank you for yesterday.” and then, “I was being stupid.” and then, “I just thought I’d like the view from up there.” and finally, “I'm Sam.”

“I'm Rumon,” I told you, “but everyone calls me Roo.”

You grinned. It was a wolfish thing. “Little Roo. Like from Winnie the Pooh. I don't watch that anymore, of course. I'm eight now.”

“I'm eight, too, but I watch it anyway. It's good.”

“But it's for kids.”

“Grown-ups watch children shows all the time.”

You appeared to be thinking about it. “That's true.”

I pointed at your cast and sling. “Does that still hurt?”

“Not much, but the doctor said I wouldn't be able to use it for at least forty days. I want to use it as soon as possible. You can't play with only one hand.”

“Play what?”

You shuffled your feet, looking down, somewhat nervous. “Violin.”

“That's so cool.”

You looked up, an uncertain smile curved at the corner of your mouth. “Yeah?”

“What do you play?”

“I'm practicing on Moonlight Sonata.”

I laughed. “I don't know what that is, but I'd like to listen some, after you got better.”

I didn't know it then, but after—years after, I would know this to be cruel, because this was where things started to get bad for you. This was where your dream started to wilt, where it started to slowly die, where your hand which used to be used for creating beautiful things would end up being used for destroying things later in the future. I was the lone witness of it. The only one with the burden of that knowledge, because right after I told you that, you smiled so happily at me I still ache from the memory sometimes.

I asked you if you'd like to play soccer. You said yes. You asked me if you could play pass with me. I said yes, and yes, and yes, the start of so many yeses in years to come. 

*

**Thursday, April 9 th, 1998**

I stared at you in awe even after you'd finished playing your precious violin for my ninth birthday at my home. You were vibrant, shining as if you were made of light, but perhaps it's the thing about memories—they make it as if it was all light and no dark. I knew even then you were good, I just didn't completely comprehend how amazing you were, unlike my father and Luce did at the time. They saw you playing your music for me, and they recognized the raw talent as it was. Unpolished and in need of more practice, but talent all the same.

You looked at me after, then away, as if you couldn't stand it. Your face flushed pink against the pale shade of your skin. You called my name hesitantly. You asked, “What? Is it awful?”

“Huh? No! It's _awesome_!” I almost shouted.

You smiled that little smile then. The uncertainty on your face killed me. You'd learned to doubt sincerity at such a young age, but I didn't know it yet. “Yeah?”

“Dude! Come on!” I remember side-hugging you, grinning widely when I let go. “Is that Moonlight Sonata?”

“No. It's...it's Bach. I thought I'd play something happier. It's your birthday.”

“That's the best thing anyone ever gave to me. Ever.”

The toothy grin you gave me that time lit up your whole being like a bask of light among the clouds.

Later, as we lay down at my backyard, looking up at the stars, talking about future and wishes, I remember you murmured to me softly about your dream. You said, “Someday, I want to play violin on a stage.”

“What kind of stage?” I asked, because I didn't know much about this, not yet, but I wanted to because it was you, and you were my best friend even then.

“Any stage.” You must have thought I couldn't hear your wistful sigh, but I did, and it made something in me clench uncomfortably. “I just want them to listen.”

I propped myself up to stare down at you.

You looked a bit scared, but why were you scared, Sam? Why would you ever be scared of me? “What?”

“They will listen.” You started to nod as if automatically, but I touched your shoulders firmly. Somehow, I knew I needed to get this to you, to show you that I meant it. My gaze at you was straight and true. I told you, “I could see it. Watching you from my seat as you play your violin. Then I'll get to say, ‘That's my best friend!’ You'll be amazing.”

I wonder now why I never thought of this before, how your eyes seemed to glisten at my words that time. There was something odd about it, that you could be moved to tears over such a trivial thing.

But it wasn't trivial for you, was it? It was important. You saw me as important even before I knew how much we would be worth for each other.

*

**Wednesday, November 4 th, 1998**

I suppose I need to learn how to forgive myself since you'd made it clear you'd never blamed me, Sam, not for anything. But some days, like today, it is so hard not to. I know we were just little kids, running around and laughing from one place to another. My backyard, your front yard, hanging onto the beams of my front porch, jumping down from that mango tree you hated as much as you loved, the flamingo pond, the yellow willow park, the small library at the corner of Crossing End Street, swinging by the rusty swing set, the clearing in the north wood, our treehouse hideout. Months after months passed, you were with me always, and yet, still, I didn't understand your sadness when no one else was looking. If you'd been here right now, I'm sure you'd have told me it didn't matter anymore, not for a long time.

Those people we'd told our stories to, they liked to assume that our lives had started only after eight. When my eyes collided with yours after I'd run after you even before I even knew your name. The past eight years of our lives before didn't seem to exist. I wonder if they were right. I wonder if I existed before I met you at all, Sam. It is such an ungrateful, terrible, and mournful thing to say, so I don't say it out loud, but I really can't imagine myself without you until I began to live it. I am only Roo because you are Sam and, at one point in my life, I thought it was all that mattered.

You'd have probably realized later that my father was rarely ever home. He was a nature and wildlife professional photographer, as you'd known. As cool as the job sounded, it was an incredibly lonely profession for us.

He couldn't let it go, though. I get it now, but I didn't understand it then. I might have told you once that I hated how he was never around. He was alive but he felt dead to me at the time. You told me once, “This kind of feelings would pass, Roo. We humans could get used to almost anything.” I knew. I knew, God, I knew it to be true, but I can't stand thinking about it because then I would wonder if someday I'd ever get used to you not being here anymore.

When we were nine, Luce was already seventeen, so she was out of the house more often than not. Except when she’s driving me to and from school and when she had to cook for me. At least, until I could do it myself.

Before you came along, I used to spend most of my spare time on my back porch. Have I ever told you that? Days after I saw you fell from that tree, I started sitting on the front porch, waiting for you to come home. You'd always come to me with that wide grin on your face, shining full of mischief after you finally managed to overcome your shyness, one that seemed to come harder as we grew older.

You jumped onto my front porch one day, throwing away your backpack to the yard before you started pacing around me in silence. I remember watching you because I understood you enough to let you mull over at what to say. I guessed that you had a news. What I couldn't figure out was if it was a good one or a bad one.

When you looked at me, your eyes were wild. You were exhilarated, I realized, so much that it looked like you were panicking. I didn't ask you, I didn't say anything. I looked back at you with a smile on my face and waited patiently because I knew even then you'd always tell me. You told me everything. It seemed to me that it was what I was doing the whole time we'd been friends, Sam. Waiting.

“Roo.”

“What is it?”

“My mom.”

“What about your mom?”

“She's pregnant,” you finally blurted. I studied you. The excitement upon your face, the panic, then finally the relief.

“ _Oh_ ,” I breathed out, because I felt your relief as if it was my own.

You started to smile then. The way happiness colored your face was blinding me and I found myself wanting to hug you. You laughed and my mind keeps playing tricks on me now, convincing me of how crisp it had sounded before everything went to shit. You whispered reverently to me, “I'm going to be an older brother.”

It never occurred to me that not many children of your age would feel this painfully happy over having younger siblings.

It was awful to wish for any other person to live inside that cursed house of yours. My therapist would probably tell me that it was not wrong of me to be happy knowing my best friend wouldn't look so lonely anymore, because as little as I was, I'd probably thought siblings would drive away the sadness. But it really didn't, did it? I don't know why I'd ever think that. You know how lonely I'd been inside my own house, in the middle of my absent family members. How my home often felt like it was trying to choke me with its suffocating sadness. So, I don't know why I'd ever thought giving you new little rascals would suddenly guarantee your happiness.

You must have understood this somehow, even then, when we were still too young to be able to see further than the next few days. You must have, because if you hadn't, you wouldn't have despised children so much when we were fifteen, even the sight of them drove you to an explosive anger. You told me once you hated it when your younger cousins came by your house with their obnoxious chatter. You always looked as if you were disgusted. You punched that boy at school one afternoon because he pulled another girl's hair, then slapped her hand away when she tried to thank you.

You must have known. And that was why you didn't blame the universe. You didn't blame it when two months later, I had to accompany you in the hospital because your mother had just lost the baby.

*

 **Friday, January 8 th, 1999  
** _Late afternoon_

You were staring at the empty wall when I ran over to you in the hospital hallway, Luce right behind me. Sitting alone right outside your mom's room, not saying anything, completely unresponsive to any movements or sound, time passed and it was as if you stayed there suspended in time. You didn't even notice me until I shook your shoulders and you stared at me blankly with your glazed eyes. I called your name over and over until you looked up and found me. There was this odd fear in me. Something that told me you'd left already and I wasn't there to tell you to come back.

But you came back to me, I saw it in your eyes when your pain came rushing into you and it ached for me. I asked you where your father was because surely, he was around here somewhere? You shook your head no. You said simply, “Gone.” and I couldn't understand that, I couldn't understand what it meant.

I glanced at Luce. She took a peek into the door's window and shook her head at me, not saying anything. I couldn't comprehend the look on her face. Something like pity and sadness and anger and disgust. I couldn't understand why you were sitting out there alone, why you shook your head, but I was shaking when I took a seat right beside you—my body understood what my mind could not.

“I'll get you boys some drink,” Luce told us gently right before she left, and I thought at the time how it was just like her to think of the simple and practical things other people didn't think they needed. A couple of minutes later you stood to walk away from your mother's room, so abruptly I couldn't do anything but follow.

I looked at you as we stopped right before a group of family. Little boys running around a man who seemed to be their father and a woman smiling down softly to a bundle of blanket in her arms. Little fingers reached out and touched her nose. She kissed them, cooing, humming. A picture of contentment playing cruelly in a never-ending loop.

You watched the scene with that expression on your face: a mix of sadness, anger, and longing—so much longing that you refused to talk about. I could see your fists tightening on your sides, your chest rising and falling because you were overwhelmed by this hunger that you knew would never be fulfilled, and wasn't that just terrible? To always be starved of something you couldn't have?

I couldn't imagine it then, but I can imagine it now, you seeing your reflection in the mirror years later, hating it before shattering it with your knuckles. I could imagine you walking hand in hand with your little brother, or sister, in a couple of years after then if they'd been born at all. I could imagine you loving them with what was left inside you, which wasn't much, but you'd give them everything you had, anyway. I could imagine you smiling radiantly. You, my soft-hearted friend, who was so lonely and in pain, who just wanted to love and be loved back.

The scene played over and over until the group went away and we were still standing in that hospital hallway, staring at the emptiness they left behind. I held your hand but you didn't notice. You were staring at nothing, your mind was hundreds miles away.

“Sam,” I croaked because I didn't know what to do.

I felt you gripping my hand back. “Yes.”

“I'm sorry.”

Your tears came then, dripping ceaselessly down to your chin. You didn't even sob. “I don't understand this.”

“Understand what?”

“How anyone could be this sad and still breathing.”

Nothing changed. Nothing was fixed. Perhaps the fact that you had just lost a sibling without having a chance to know them at all was just another point in your long list of unattainable dreams. But when I wrapped my arms around you and held you, you clutched onto me like I was your anchor when you were about to float away. You sobbed onto my shoulders, this big whacking sob that shook your whole body, and I held you still.

Nothing was okay, but I had you, Sam. I always had you. For a second there, I thought it was enough.

*

 **Friday, January 8 th, 1999** _  
_ _Evening_

We took you back home to my house that night. You weren't talking, so I just held your hand tightly all the way home.

“It'll be better if he's staying with us for a couple of days,” Luce finally said into the oppressive silence of the car.

“Is that okay?” I asked her hopefully because I would like that. Even then I'd learned to worry about you all the time, Sam, it's just something I couldn't stop from growing. As we got older, the concern got all tangled up with desire and frustration. You wouldn't let me take care of you. I'd ask myself over and over, _why wouldn't you?_ Why wouldn't you just talk to me and let me take care of it for you? Why wouldn't you just get over your stupid pride?

“Sam, would you like to stay at our place for a while?” Luce asked softly, glancing at the rearview mirror with her sad, sad eyes. “We'd love to have a company. The house gets too quiet sometimes.”

You didn't say anything. You hadn't said anything since before I'd held you.

“It's going to be like sleepover,” I told you with a smile. “I'd always wanted to have friends for sleepover. Come on, Sam.”

You smiled back at me then. It was small and shaky, but a smile nevertheless. Your nod almost made me sob, but I kept it in. I kept all of it in for you, Sam, always.

“I'll tell your father.” I could hear an undercurrent of anger vibrating within her words, but I didn't ask. Somehow, with your hand in mine, I just couldn't.

*

 **Friday, January 8 th,1999  
** _Evening_

“You care about him a lot.”

I looked up to see Luce studying me from the other side of the couch. Your head was leaning onto my shoulder as you'd just managed just fall asleep. The look Luce gave me told me that she knew something I didn't, but I was a kid then, so I just thought she was being weird.

“Of course I do. He's my best friend,” I said to her in bafflement.

“And you don't have many of those.”

I averted my eyes. “I don't. Why?”

“Since mom—" She must have thought I didn't notice the way her voice crack, but I did. She cleared her throat and said, “Since mom, you hate hospitals. You'd cry and wail noisily when we went into one, Roo, remember?”

I smiled at her serenely because I did.

“You ran there, Roo,” Luce continued. Something about her tone made it seem like she was on verge of tears. “You ran into the hospital looking for him.”

We didn't say anything else afterward. Just passing the hours watching television. I didn't know what the point of that conversation at the time, but I know what she meant now. Perhaps I've always known, Sam, if I'd only let myself be more perceptive—which I didn't do.

Perhaps Luce, too, had always known from the start. Long before I did.

*

**Sunday, February 28 th, 1999**

Days passed after, blurring into weeks.

You came home to me more often than not. You didn't speak, and I could remember those days plainly because it was the start of many. The last few weeks before you shot yourself, we had not been speaking right to each other and I regret that deeply, Sam. I regret it so much because I wish I had. My last words to you had been for you to _wait, please,_ but you didn't, you couldn't wait for another sunset to pass, you couldn't sit there on your porch with the silence you'd come to know too intimately, you couldn't bring yourself to walk another step from where you were standing, and most importantly, you couldn't bring yourself to see me anymore because it made everything in you ache.

But that came long after—years after life had hardened you. We were still too young at nine, too fragile. I could see it in the slump of your shoulders, the way your words seemed to brittle when you tried to talk or smile.

So, I didn't ask you to do any of those. I asked you to play soccer with me. You said _yes_. Your kicks were a mess and sometimes you tried to cover up the fact that you were crying, but we played together anyway for weeks until you reluctantly started to smile again.

*

**Saturday, March 4 th, 2000**

I didn't notice anything was wrong until this one day in autumn when we were ten. You hadn't been to school for a few days, but you'd called me that Saturday morning to go for cycling with you, which was something we did a lot of times, so it wasn't out of ordinary or anything.

I waited for you on the steps of my front porch, until you came out riding slowly. You smiled a little when you reached me, but I didn't notice that it was shaky, nor did I notice that you were somewhat jittery.

“Where have you been, Sam?” There was a faint blue around your upper arm and shoulder. “What's wrong? Did you fall? There's a bruise on your arm.”

You quickly pulled your sleeves over your arms. “I fell.”

“Did you put ice on them? Dad always told me to do it when I had bruises. What happened?”

“I already did. Let's go?”

We went around the town for a couple of hours. When we were back on my yard, you glanced at your dark house fleetingly, there was fear there that my children brain didn't understand, but you looked back at me and asked, “See you on Monday, Roo?”

I nodded and I watched you limp a little to your garage. I didn't notice you'd never gotten to tell me what had happened to you in those last few days other than that you'd fallen until after I was inside my house.

Years after that, you almost always had a couple of days absence every month. I worried, but you wouldn't tell me more than you'd fallen, so I stopped asking about it. I felt there was more to it, to the way you limped and winced and flinched to slightest of touch, but you wouldn't tell me. Some days you came to my place, your hands were trembling too much to go cycling so I put mine on your shoulder gently and said, “Let's just play console games today, okay?”

I felt your sob more than I saw it when you wrapped your little arms around me.

Oh, Sam, how you had suffered.

*

**Saturday, November 11 th, 2000**

I think we were eleven when my father came for a month off from his constant traveling due to his job and asked us to prepare for a camping at the nearest campsite right at the foot of the hills on the southern part of the town. You were ecstatic. I thought back then that you were because you'd never camped before, but now I wonder if you were that happy because you got to spend time with my father, because he treated you like his own son, too.

As you'd known, my father came back home once every year. I could never point which month he would go back, but when he did, he would stay for a month or so. He was a “cool dad” as you'd told me before when we were eight and he came back for the first time. You'd sniffed at me and given me a look.

“What?”

“You're so lucky,” you'd grumbled that time.

I hadn't told you I'd known that I was, not because of my father like the way you'd implied, but because I always had you around. Loneliness was a problem I could never fix and you didn't understand what a gift it was to have a best friend you could share everything with.

After we packed up the camping gears, we went into the car and we sang the whole way with the windows down. At some point we were laughing so hard we were crying over some stupid jokes my father said. I forgot what the jokes were, but I remember sometime after the car neared the hills with the sun filtered through the yellow and red leaves, you raised your left hand, Sam, the one you'd broken and injured many times after the falling off tree incident it started to scar everywhere and tremble. You raised your left hand as if to catch the patches of lights on your skin, and I swear, I swear to you I thought I was seeing a golden little god. I was so in awe with you, but you took your hand back into the car with a sad look on your face, a look much older than we were. A look I should have understood because I saw it every time I looked into the mirror.

We laughed a lot that day, especially when my father tried to teach us how to use a fishing pole on the nearest shallow stream. You sucked at it. Well, I did, too, shut up, but I'm sure we could have gotten better if we'd been practicing more over the years, but we hadn't and that is one of many things I regret. You would have told me, “Nothing you can do, you carry your burden, I carry mine.” but it hurt me either way. I'd wanted to see your laugh more than I'd gotten the chance in the past decade. I think that's the problem. I always want for more.

The next morning, when my father asked me to put away the camping tools, I didn't question him, but I saw as he held you tightly in his arms, how you clung onto him, shaking, shaking, shaking, so vulnerable as you wept. I wondered if my father knew then what had happened to you. I wondered why I hadn't noticed, why I hadn't asked more persistently. Instead, I waited in the shadows until you stopped crying and pulled away from his embrace, joking and elbowing you on our way back to the car as if I didn't notice a thing. I didn't think to ask my father what it was about. I should have, Sam. I should have.

I was silent because you'd been subdued the whole way back home. Once in a while, I noticed you were moving the fingers on your left hand, as if you were trying to remind yourself they were there, they could move, they still belonged to you. I didn't understand it then; your grief, your loss, your desperation.

I let you lean on my shoulder, sleeping, because you were hurting and I was just a little boy who didn't know what else to do.

*

**Sunday, November 12 th, 2000**

“Roo, can I talk to you for a minute?”

I saw my father closing the car's door right after you hurried back into your house. I noticed how you were always in hurry those days. Sometimes you looked so stricken and I would get this inexplicable nausea in me. I didn't want you to go back there, but every day I let you go anyway.

“What's up, Dad?” I asked him after we went inside our house, putting away the camping gears. It was as quiet as it had always been. I remember feeling a pang of loss back then in thinking my father would be leaving again in just a couple of days, but then I remembered I had you, Sam, and you didn't know just how much relief it gave me.

I was baffled when I didn't hear a reply, so I looked back at him, frowning. “Dad?”

I couldn't tell you what it was like, the expression on his face. It was one of determination and concern—and maybe sadness, but that expression was so foreign on him because I hadn't seen it since my mother's passing. I could hear the rush of blood in my ears and the pounding in my chest. “Dad, what's wrong? You're scaring me.”

His hands were gentle when they landed on my shoulders. I heard him clearing his throat, but he croaked anyway, “Roo, would you be honest with me?”

“Of course.” I couldn't recall the time I was ever being dishonest to him and anyway, we had seen each other too rarely for me to start complicate things so I'd rather I didn't.

“You and Sam have been friends for years.”

“Yeah.”

“From your stories and your emails you seem to be playing with each other a lot even in school.”

I still couldn't see where it was heading, but I sat down onto the couch as he did the same. “Well yeah, Dad. I mean, we're neighbors!”

“Do you have other friends?”

I blinked at him then laughed. “Of course, we do, Dad. What kind of question is _that_? Can't play sports with just the two of us.”

My breath was released as I saw his small smile. I didn't even think I was that tense. You probably got it that he rarely asked me for a talk and maybe he was absent too much to be much of a stern parent. I thought there must be something wrong.

“Okay,” he finally said, but he was still watching me, his mouth opened and closed as if he wasn't sure what to say.

“What, Dad?”

“Do you like Sam?”

I smiled because wasn't that an easy question with an obvious answer? “'Course, I do. He's my best friend.”

He cleared his throat again. “What if both of you become brothers? Would you like that?”

“What do you mean?”

“If he became your brother, you wouldn't be alone so much anymore. Don't you like that?”

“What? Of course, I do! That's _amazing_! That's just—"

I didn't understand at the time why it was that I choked on my words. My fists clenched on top of the couch. Why I couldn't exactly look at him in the eyes. There was a storm in me, Sam. A storm I didn't understand, but my father, being an intelligent and open-minded person as he was, recognized it for what it was. He looked so sad it made everything inside me ache.

He put his arm gently around my shoulders and rested his head on top of mine. We just sat there, staring at the old clock on top of the television. Time suspended and stopped. He was busy with his thoughts while I waited. Long minutes passed until I said, “Dad?”

“I like him, too, Son.”

His words made me grin because, Sam, it filled my whole being with joy when somebody noticed how great you were beneath the silence and shyness. I looked up to him. “You do?”

He smiled back at me like he was proud of me and how I wanted him to stay that way forever. “He's a good kid.”

“He's smart, too!”

“Yeah.”

“And he plays violins well!”

My father chuckled as he ruffled my hair, making me laugh. “We were all there on your ninth birthday, Roo.” We held each other for a moment before he said to me, “Just remember that whatever happens, you and Luce are the best children I could ever ask for and I'm always, always very proud of you.”

I held him tighter because what would you say to that?

Have you ever felt like this, Sam? To hold the whole world inside your arms?

*

**Tuesday, October 29 th, 2002**

It happened so suddenly: the sound of everything around us crashing down.

You had just turned twelve. It was 29th of October 2002, three days after your birthday. My father had just gotten home for the month. The three of us were eating dinner in a subdued talk about Luce's college until we heard a loud crash from across the street. We all ran outside, just in time to see the horror.

I don't know why it didn't register right away in my mind that it was coming from your place. The loud crashes. The screams. The cracks. The cries. The yells and shouts. The harsh words. Your mother screeching. Your father standing on the front porch, shouting at something he held around his fingers. And you, Sam, you—

I heard somebody screaming. I think it was me. I ran to you even before I understood what I was seeing. I said, _STOP STOP STOP LEAVE HIM ALONE GET YOUR HANDS OFF HIM_ but no one did, no one ever stopped. I saw him, that _monster_ , clenching his fingers around your neck as if it was a stick as you struggled and wept. Your right hand was trying pitifully to get rid off the hands clutching around your neck, your left arm fell uselessly on your side.

I think I attacked him. I couldn't remember much, which was odd because you knew by now how I remembered everything, Sam, even the things I didn't ever want to remember. But I could recall jumping onto your father's back, hitting him, screaming for him to let you go. I remember seeing the tears falling down your cheeks over and over.

Another thing crashed when he finally released you and I found myself scrambling after you. All of a sudden, Luce was there right beside me, her hands were shaking. I could hear my father's angry voice, raising in between the shouts, but I saw only you. You, Sam, with your bloodied face and bruised neck and broken bones. You, who only lay down there on the wooden floor, crying silently.

With trembling hands, I swiped the stray hair out of your face. I saw your eyes and I held my breath, because that exact moment, that exact moment was the first time I saw the deadness in you. And I couldn't understand it, I couldn't comprehend how someone who was so full of life could look like death.

You wouldn't meet my eyes. Not even after Luce came back with a clean cloth, trying to stop the blood coming out of the side of your head. I felt trapped inside a limbo. You wore the skin of my best friend, yet I did not recognize your eyes.

“I'm going to report this to the police.” I heard my father said. His voice was so cold, Sam, do you remember?

“Call them then!” the monster yelled, slurring in his words for all the alcohol inside his veins. His voice was booming in its loudness, rough and striking like lightning. I saw the way you flinched, how you blinked and came alive. “Call the child services! Call all of them for all I care! I have no need for that piece of shit!”

I didn't see you get up, but then I saw you crouching on the floor beside your father, sobbing violently. Your right hand was clutching tightly onto his leg as you wept and wept. This is the second image I can never get out of my head, Sam. How you clung onto him, how you wailed and said, “No, please, no, Dad. Forgive me. Forgive me. I won't do it again. I promise. Please.”

“ _Shut up!_ ” Your father tried to shake you off his leg in disgust. “You always say that yet you keep messing with my stash! No one—” he slurred further, “—No one touches what’s mine!”

You clung onto him tighter. Your voice was a croak. “I swear, I won't, never again. I swear.”

“And how many times have I told you I hate that shrieking violin of yours! Burn it before I do it for you!”

You were quiet for a second, but no one noticed it other than me. You said, “Yes, Dad. I will. Later.”

Only then your father stopped struggling. He snorted as he moved away, back into the house, the broken window and crooked railing and broken bottles be damned, but not before he said, “Good. Why does it always take you a hard beating to do what I want? Worthless fucking kid.”

He left you there, lying on the floor of the front porch, unmoving. I looked around the house and found your mother, staring blankly at the scene, scratching at the needle scars on her arm before leaving through the back door, leaving you alone with the three of us.

On our way to the hospital, I was gritting my teeth so hard they ached. Everything about your life was so fucking painful, Sam. I wondered if that was what it felt like, to grit your teeth as you saw that happy little family in the hospital, if it filled you up with this same excruciating pain.

Most of my earliest memories of you are ones where you were crying. How is that possible? I have seen you happy, I have seen you laugh and grin and yet the ones I can recall when I think of you is how much you have cried.

“Don't look at me like that,” you croaked from where you were lying on the backseat of my father’s car. Your head on my lap, but your eyes were looking somewhere else, somewhere that wasn't me. I didn't dare to touch you. I didn't know where to touch. I thought about all of the bruises many months before, the way you flinched at the slightest touch, the way you jumped at loud sounds.

I felt tears leaking at the corner of my eyes. “Like what?”

“Like I'm too damaged to be your friend.”

I wiped my eyes. “He hurt you, Sam. He hurt you badly.”

You didn't say anything, perhaps too weak to do so.

“Get out of that house,” I found myself whispering to you, “Live with us.”

For the first time that night, you looked at me in the eyes. There was life there then, there was that wistfulness I'd come to know intimately many years after. You said to me, “I'd like that, but I can't.”

“ _Why?_ Why not? If you're there, he'd—"

“I can't, Roo, I've got to fix it. Please.”

“Fix _what?_ There's nothing to fix!”

“They used to laugh a lot, Roo,” you told me firmly, begging me to understand, but I didn't, I still don't, “I've got to fix that.”

I didn't say anything because I didn't care. I was set on getting you out of there. I masked it well, but you must have seen it. You always saw through me.

“Swear to me, Roo.”

“Swear what?”

“Don't play stupid.” Your voice wavered. “Swear to me you're not going to do anything, you're not going to ask your dad or anyone to do anything. Swear you're going to let me do what I need.”

I didn't say anything. I was still gritting my teeth. You knew how much promises meant to me, how important they were, because you heard my stories about my last days with my mother. How I innocently promised to her everything was going to get better soon—except it wasn't. How I believed my father's words when he promised he would be around more after her passing, except the house was too suffocating with grief that he had to get away, leaving me all alone again. You knew what promises meant to me.

“Roo,” you insisted. Your voice was unsteady with pain and I hurt for you, Sam. I wished you could share me your pain. I still wish you could share me your pain.

“I swear.”

You released the breath you'd been holding and fell into unconsciousness.

Watching as the nurses pushed your bed into the emergency room, I stood there alone in my numbness. I felt my father's arm around my shoulders, but I stood where I was. My world shifted along with yours. I wondered then how many times this had happened, only there wasn't hospital in the past. I pictured you with your long sleeves in the middle of summer. I pictured your exhausted eyes. I pictured the days you had zoned out in the middle of our talks. I pictured the violent shaking of your hands when we were out cycling.

“This is _bullshit_! I've had enough!”

“Luce.” I heard the warning in my father's voice, but Luce, my sister as you'd known, was never one to listen.

“You need to report this, Dad. _Now!_ ” Luce came closer, her nostrils were flaring, her cheeks red with anger. With her long light brown hair and brown eyes, she looked too much like our late mother. Perhaps this was also why my father wouldn't come home more often. It hurt to look at Luce sometimes—I knew this as well. “Or I will!”

“I will, Luce, but first we need to see how Sam's doing—”

“Are you mad?” Luce exclaimed louder. People in the hospital halls glanced at us disapprovingly. My father tried to touch her to calm her down, but she was hissing. “Don't touch me!”

“Lucy,” my father told her, “you are allowed to be angry—God knows I'm angry, too—but being hysterical doesn't help any.”

I saw her face twist. Her anger turned into something similar to what I'd been feeling: a crippling sadness, a sense of helplessness. At twenty, she suddenly looked much younger. “Dad,” she whispered, “he's only a _child_."

“I asked him last year if he wanted to leave. He said he didn't want to.”

“Oh, _who cares_ what he said!”

“He also said he wouldn't testify against them in the trials even if I helped out. He was set on staying.”

I moved away from my father's touch as if I was burned, looking at him like I couldn't believe what he was saying. “When was this?”

My father looked back at me. His clear blue eyes were so like mine in their sadness. He said to me, “During our last camping.”

And I thought. I thought of how you looked like sobbing into his arms as I hid between the trees. I thought of my father's question to have you within our family. I thought of how sad you were and how happy I was.

I saw Luce, how her face crumpled. She'd known. She'd known for a while.

I thought to myself: _this was happening right before my eyes._

And I thought: _I didn't notice it at all._

As if he could read my mind, my father reached out to me and said, “Roo, it's not your fault.”

I brushed him off because he didn't get it, you didn't get it, Sam, no one understood that it was my fault. It was the beginning of everything, of how everything crumbled down. If only I'd noticed before. If only I'd talked you about it first. If only I'd asked more persistently about your bruises. If only I'd changed your mind before giving you my word. I knew you'd listen to me, you always listened to me back then.

“Don't call anyone,” I found myself saying, taking a step back.

“ _What_?” Luce sputtered. “Kid, you have no fucking idea—"

“I swore to him, Luce!” I yelled. “I swore!”

If they said something else to me, I didn't remember hearing any. I ran outside the hospital, I ran and ran and ran. My backyard, your front yard, under the beams of my front porch, passing that mango tree you hated as much as you loved, the flamingo pond, the yellow willow park, the small library at the corner of Crossing End Street, zooming past by the rusty swing set, the clearing in the north wood, our treehouse hideout. Months after months passed, you were with me always, and yet, still, I didn't understand your sadness when no one else was looking.

I thought running would purge me off my guilt, but it only crushed my lungs as I screamed into the night.

*

**Wednesday, October 30 th, 2002**

You looked like death warmed over.

I didn't know it yet, but this wouldn’t be the worst condition you'd ever be in. There was still the worst one yet when we were fifteen. It wasn't quite all over your body like that time we were twelve, but it was the worst one because it took away your identity.

But here now, you were lying in the hospital bed. You father wasn't around, your mother was at the front office, and I was sitting there right beside you, watching the way your chest rose and fell. A cast was set around your left arm, bandages around your head, black and blue bruises around your neck. I wondered absently what they'd told the doctor about those bruises. I wondered if anyone believed that bullshit.

“Did you call anyone?”

I must have dozed off because you were suddenly awake and the sun was high on the horizon. I looked out to the window, then back to your inquisitive hazel eyes, much darker now under the sedative.

I said to you, “No.”

Your fingers moved under the covers. I reached to hold them in mine.

“Practice your violin at my place,” I murmured to your ears, “I can keep it safe for you.”

You gave me that wistful little smile before you fell right back sleep. I wondered sometimes if it was just another nightmare.

*

**Wednesday, December 18 th, 2002**

Early December 2002, at the end of our school final term before we started junior high school, you stood at the back of your class' row inside that stadium with blue cast still wrapped around your left arm.

In the past month, there had been no police, no social services, no reports on your parents. I didn't know it yet, but it would have been useless anyway.

You walked forward when the teachers called your name. Small, independent, courageous, you received the best student award all on your own. You stayed there for a moment, microphone in front of your mouth. That should've been a moment for your absent parents. That should've been one of the greatest moments of your life.

You said your curt thank you and walked down the steps, but it didn't matter. It didn't matter how short it was, how awkward, how fast. What mattered most was that it had been genuine. What mattered most was that seeing you there had filled me with pride.

What mattered most was that, on top of that stage, you had been looking at me the whole time.

*

 **Wednesday, December 18 th, 2002** _  
_ _Late afternoon_

I remember running, laughing as we passed by that old man Mr. Frederick and his old golden retriever. Through the small northern wood, across the flamingo pond then the river. We hid in our treehouse, waiting. We knew that we'd outgrown that treehouse, that most likely next year when our growth spurt came, neither of us would fit there anymore, so we watched quietly as the sunset arrived and went.

It was a scorching summer night. In your right hand was your best student certificate. You stood to read it out loud for me.

BEST STUDENT OF 2002  
S-A-M-S-O-N B-R-O-W-N  
WITH PRIDE AND JOY

We laughed with each other, then lay down on the creaking wooden floor, giddy with life, looking up at the dark ceiling. We were quiet for long minutes, but we had never needed words in between silence in all of our time together so I listened to your breathing, to the sound of insects outside the treehouse, to the sound of tree leaves blown by the wind.

After a while, I asked you, “How come you've never told me to call you Sammy?”

You barked a laugh—a loud one, filled with occasional snorts that I had to laugh along. This is the kind of days I count on, Sam, days in which I could listen to your laughter for hours. The kind of days I hold tightly inside my chest even now.

When your laughter subsided, again we were suspended in a comfortable silence we'd known well. Quietly, you said, “My parents used to call me Sammy.”

“Oh.” I didn't ask what they called you after. _Worthless child_ was playing in loop in my mind.

“Do you want to call me 'Sammy'?”

I thought about it. “No,” I told you, “I like 'Sam' better.”

You sat up from your lounging, peering down at me. And Sam, how bright you had smiled.

*

**Monday, February 10 th, 2003**

I heard a saying once that we were supposed to meet people who were going to be our life-long friends when we were around thirteen. I forgot who had told me that, but I kind of believed it then.

I don't think it is true for you though, Sam, because I had never seen you with close friends other than me. Perhaps if you counted how in the last months you had been alive I saw you hang out with the kids from our school's backyard, with cigarette between your lips and a bottle of cheap whiskey around your fingers. You had that look on your face when you thought no one had been looking—with eyes closed, wincing as if you were drenched in pain.

I know you'd told me before, “It's no one's fault, Roo. Sometimes pain is there to stay.” But I wanted to be angry. I wanted to yell and scream about how unfair it was that you had to bear it all on your own, that I couldn't carry it for you. I wanted to shake your parents, telling them how unfair it was that you had to go when a lot of times it felt to me that you were all I had, Sam.

Tell me, Sam. Tell me because I didn't know, and I still don't. _Tell me_ , who am I supposed to be without you?

They didn't get it, they never understood. All I had ever wanted was to hear you laugh, to see your eyes light up when you are talking about buried dreams. Your left arm would shake as it always did in the last few years, but we'd find a way. I know we would. We were a team of two, of a sun and a little seal. We always found a way.

That morning, days after your funeral, I tried to walk through the school halls, but they echoed with your presence and I looked for you everywhere, but those faces, they were ghosts. They wore your smile, your laughter, your sense of humor, your sarcasm. They wore the shade of your skin, your hair, your scent, the casual way you touched. So I stood there staring at them, wondering if I had become a ghost, too, because I was an urn overflowing with memories which didn't know where to go.

Penny was there at your funeral. She wasn't there for long, and I knew you couldn't care less if she came by or not. You never did believe me when I said that she really cared about your well-being in a roundabout way. But maybe if you'd been there attending your own funeral you would have seen what I'd meant. The only person who delivered an eulogy for you that day was her.

I could never deliver mine. I felt like it wouldn't do you any justice. How could two pieces of paper describe what you meant to me? No one there knew you as well as I did. Not even your father, who had looked stricken for the first time I'd known him. Not even your mother, who had cried over you a few years too late. What was the point?

“The first time I knew Sam,” she began, her voice was unusually steady like it did when she tried to hide her real feelings, “I thought he was someone else and punched him in the face.”

I'm sure you remember, we were both twelve when we met Penny, at the start of our first junior high school year. Her straight bright red hair fell messily down to her shoulders. She was walking into our class with two of her friends, her face blank, her eyes fierce. This is how I would always picture her, even now, a couple of months before we start attending the same university. Her fierceness called out to me the way your uncertainty did.

You were sitting right in front of me, facing back at me on your chair. You hadn't seen her yet, but she was a hawk finding its prey in you. She strolled quickly straight to you, but you were still talking about the weird dog you saw at the northern wood last night as I tried to tap your arm for your attention. I wasn't fast enough.

She shouted, “Hey, you!”. Penny grabbed the hood of your sweater and pulled you back off your chair onto the floor. I saw as your eyes widened in surprise, but you couldn't open your mouth, you couldn't say your word, because she was swinging her fist right to your nose.

Blood dripped from your nose as you curled yourself into a ball, moaning, looking up to her with an angry and wounded expression.

I stood up from my chair.

“That,” she yelled, “is for lying to my friend, you stupid _poop_!”

“ _Penny_!” her friend hissed, pulling her back urgently.

She whirled around, glaring. “What? Do you need me to punch him more? Because I freaking would!”

“That's what I'm trying to tell you.” Her friend sighed exasperatedly. “That's not him.”

“What?”

“Wrong person,” her friend assured.

Silence.

And I just couldn't help myself, Sam. I fell over cackling.

“She called you poop!”

I heard you grumble. “Fucking _ouch_.”

“That's—" I wheezed, “—the best one yet!”

“I'm glad it's funny, Roo.” But I couldn't see your glare which I was sure would be there, I couldn't reply, I was too busy trying to contain my laughter as I doubled over my chair. “Sure, laugh more, Roo. It's not like I'm bleeding.” I just laughed harder.

Penny looked flustered. In panic she asked her friend for a tissue or something, anything to which her friend replied with an unimpressed _why would I bring tissue paper with me when you don't_. Penny replied with a squeak, a dozen apologies, and flailing hands around you. You brushed her off, not unkindly, it was just that you'd never liked anyone touching you other than me and my family, but she looked awfully guilty.

Still snickering, I crouched down and wiped your nose with my sleeve. The blood had stopped, but I didn't want to take any chances, so I pulled you up, gave your back a sympathetic pat which you replied with a grunt and turned around to face Penny who still looked concerned. With a smile I told her, “It's alright. I'll bring this stupid poop to the infirmary to get checked.” I pressed my lips to hold back another peal of laughter.

“That's real nice, Roo,” you muttered as you wiped your nose with your own sleeve, “I appreciate it.” I smiled then because if I could recall correctly this was the year when you'd started to get sarcastic about everything. I thought at the time it was funny. I was so sure at the time that your sarcasm would stay as that and not turn harsh cynicism, so I chuckled to myself. Unaware with the future, unaware that you would shoot yourself dead at seventeen, unaware of so many things.

Penny though, Penny had stopped fidgeting. She was staring at me with an intensity which was still unknown to me at the time.

I raised my eyebrows. “Umm, Penny, right?”

She finally blinked. “Yeah.”

Pointing at myself, I told her, “Rumon. Call me Roo.” I pointed to you next. “Sam.”

She was still staring at me.

“Is your hand okay?”

“Huh?”

“Your hand, Penny.” I smiled at her again because the way she zoned out was also kind of funny. I remember telling you about this later that day and you only gave me a distasteful scowl.

“Oh. Oh yeah. It's ok-okay.” She averted her eyes, unwilling to look back at me again. Her words were tumbling across each other, hurried if not a little bit breathless. I watched blush spread around her cheeks, highlighting her sparse freckles around her nose. It was rather remarkable, really, how sweet she was. “Y-your eyes.”

I blinked. I felt your hand gripping on my elbow, trying to take me away, but I found myself asking her, “My eyes?”

After a small exhale, she said to me softly, “They're the prettiest thing I have ever seen.” Before I could reply though, she called out to her friend, mumbling something about kicking some other idiotic poop's ass then ran outside the class as if her heels were on fire.

“Huh.” I glanced at you, puzzled. “Weird.”

“Is it?” You looked unhappy. The red around your nose seemed bright and angry.

“She's cute, though.”

You growled at me, then walked fast ahead, forcing me to jog after you. I could laugh if I think about that time again. We were so young, so innocent. Still, but trotting after you, wrapping my arm around your shoulders, I regret that didn't get to tell you my home would always ever be where you were.

*

**Saturday, April 19 th, 2003**

The first time they found what a gem you were, Sam, wasn't at all quite how you'd imagined they would, but it was exactly how I'd meant it to be. In the middle of April, around two weeks after my fourteenth birthday, we were sneaking into that new bar right at the border of our town, snickering to ourselves the whole way.

“Stop laughing,” you whispered loudly at me, smirking, your eyes glinting in the dark. How happy you'd looked, how alive.

“You're the one laughing too much!” I hissed back, my heart racing inside my rib cage. “You're going to get us caught!”

“No, you.”

“You!”

“Shut up, Roo.”

The bar wasn't like any other bar we'd known—it wasn't like we went to many of them at the time, but still, for one, Bright Night quickly became famous due to the live music they played every Saturday night. The band played mostly jazz and chill music, but that wasn't what had drawn us there.

It was the violinist.

From the back door we sneaked into the back of the bar, peering our heads beyond the door to the front. It was loud and crowded, bursting with life, and I found myself restless with so much energy which didn't know where to go.

I'd taken a serious interest in photography from locking myself up in the dark room of my house for hours at night while you were practicing your violin. That’s why I had my camera looped around my neck all the time by then. I took a picture of the scene the first time we came, memorizing it in my mind how colorful and warm it was. I still had the picture in the album book inside my room, along with the picture of how you had looked on the stage much later that night, smiling as if you were made of light.

“Did you see him?” you asked.

I started to shake my head, but then my eyes caught deep brown hair with violin right beside the curtain. I nudged your elbow and pointed. “There.”

“Holy shit,” you breathed out, sounding almost afraid. “I can't believe it's really him.”

Few days before that night, we'd met Damian Doyle while we were cycling around the neighborhood. There had been moving trucks right outside the sold vacant house and he was just sitting there, on his front yard, clutching something in his chest.

I'd decided right then to ignore it and continue cycling. It wasn't my place. The thing about me no one really knew—no one other than you—was the fact that I could easily turn a blind eye for people I didn't care about. Damian Doyle had been a stranger, a new addition to our neighborhood I hadn't know yet and so I hadn't cared about him. But you'd stopped your bicycle and watched him closely, a frown colored your face.

“Sam?”

“What's up with him?”

I glanced at the man, then back at you. “Not sure.”

“He's clutching his hand. Maybe he's in trouble.”

I laughed under my breath, uncertain. “What?”

You looked back at me then, and I stopped my laughter because I saw your concern. Here was something about you no one else seemed to know: how achingly kind you were.

I nodded. You didn't say anything, Sam, you didn't have to. I knew what you wanted to do. So, you rode your bicycle to the man and I followed you along. You knew even then that I'd follow you anywhere.

Turned out he had sprained his wrist trying to take his things out of the truck. Damian had initially refused to see it to the hospital, but I knew what you were like when you were being stubborn, Sam. You scowled at him worriedly when he got out of the hospital's emergency room.

You were like flies. You'd nag until you got what you wanted and usually you succeeded getting just that. Apparently, it was no different for that man.

Damian threw us a smile. His brown hair fell onto his round glasses. He looked almost sheepish, which I'd admit was an odd look on an adult. “Thanks, kids.”

Now it was your turn to look sheepish. You'd never done well with gratitude—or common human decency shown to you in general, really. “We didn't do anything.”

“Yes, you did. Had you both not come around to nag, I wouldn't have seen the doctor.” He sighed deeply, like he was exhausted. “Then I wouldn't have known I'd cracked my wrist, not just sprained it, and it would have been the end of my career.”

Before you started to deny the gratitude again, I cut you off. “You're welcome. What is it that you do anyway?”

“Ah.” Damian smiled then, it lit up his whole face, as if remembering this one thing brought him so much happiness it filled his whole being. He must have been in his late twenties back then, but his smile always made him look much younger. He said to us, “I'm playing violin in a musical band.”

I felt more than saw the way you perk up at the word. “Musical band?” I asked.

“Yeah. My band had just moved around this neighborhood under two-years contract to play in Bright Night bar every Saturday evening.” Damian sighed again, then his nose scrunched. “This is a disaster. What am I supposed to say to my band mates now?”

I felt the way you were vibrating right beside me, Sam. The way you wanted to speak, but couldn't, because your voice was clogged in your throat along with your words. You had been holding back your voice for years, now it always failed you in situations that required you to use it.

But that was why you had me. In my most innocent voice I said, “Wow, that's amazing. Sam plays violin, too!”

Damian blinked. He threw a glance at you. “Do you?”

I remember how flustered you had looked, stumbling in your words. Blush blossomed on your cheeks down to your ears and neck. Here was the you that I'd met years ago, shy and uncertain with himself. You couldn't answer, so I said, “He does! Really, really, well.” I felt your warning poke on my side, but I didn't waver.

My wide smile was still plastered on my face. I wanted this person to know how good you were. I thought this was the point of me being here, my purpose, to make people see your worth that you couldn't see yourself.

Damian's smile softened, then he gave us a wink. “Maybe both of you could sneak out to see us play sometime.”

Damian was chuckling as my mind churned. Perhaps his invitation had been in jest at the time. Perhaps he thought it was cute how to little boys learned to play violin. I didn't give a shit, Sam. All I cared about was that it could be a big chance. I had a strong feeling about this. Behind my eyelids was a picture of you, practicing your violin at my place, grinning wide as you told me about your dream, your bashfulness when we tried to give you compliments. So I didn't care if it was initially a joke, I would do anything to let them see.

I realize now that I had never told you about this before. Why? Why didn't I? I wonder if you'd known, if you'd realized sometime later that this was a part of my plan, a plan that, in the end, made it worse for you than it already had been. I wonder if my guilt would ever ease. I don't think it will, Sam. I don't think it ever will.

Later, when he waved at us and went back into his dark house, I noticed how restless you were, how unsure.

“We're going this weekend.”

“B-but!” you sputtered. “It's a bar, Roo!”

“So?”

“We're not allowed to be there. We're _thirteen_!”

“I'm fourteen,” I corrected you with a grin.

“Not my point, dumbass!” you hissed.

I scoffed. “As if rules had ever stopped us before. Sam, come on.”

“B-but I—"

“You told me before you wanted to play on a stage somewhere.”

“I know I did, but—"

“We're just going to watch, Sam. There's no harm in watching. Maybe it would motivate you. See?”

I watched as my words started to tear down your walls. I managed to sway you, I knew this for a fact. Neither of us had ever been good at ignoring curiosity, so I knew exactly what effect my words would have on you. I watched as if in slow-motion, how you slowly changed your mind, warming up to the idea, warming up to me as I knew you would.

I knew exactly that you'd say, “Okay.”

I could feel my heart stumble. “Okay?”

“Okay, Roo, okay.” You exhaled the breath you'd been holding. “This weekend.”

My grin must be contagious because I saw another one mirrored on yours.

“What do we do now?” you asked me days later, after we had sneaked into the dim-lit bar. The way you looked at me, wide-eyed in your panic, how brittle you voice was; all of it only strengthened my resolve.

“Let's go.” Then I walked fast to the backstage, ignored your hissing my name, telling me to wait.

The conversation was hushed, drowned in the middle of how loud the bar had been. As we neared, I caught some of the words thrown, filled with a mix of irritation and concern, then Damian's calm voice along with his sigh.

“So, what, you're planning to play? With that wrist?”

“I'm fine,” Damian drawled as if bored. “I tried playing yesterday. I could afford an hour.”

“Not that, you dimwit! What did the doctor say?”

I saw him shrug and I wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it. Damian, I had thought, reminded me a bit of someone, with his hair, his drawl, and his lazy gait. The thought made me frown because for the life of me I couldn't recall who it was he had reminded me of, I still can't, but he felt a bit familiar. Maybe that was the main reason I decided to hang around him later on, other than because you seemed to be taken by him, that is.

From beside me, I heard your sharp breath intake. “He's still planning to play?”

As I was watching Damian getting chewed out by his other band members, I remembered all the times you had insisted on playing even with your sprained arm, at least until I scolded you to take some days off, but wisely decided not to point that out. I saw his bandmate left, but I didn't have the chance to reply though because in the darkness, Damian's eyes widened as he found mine. His grin wasn't at all pissed, if anything he looked delighted. I decided that was all the permission we needed to come closer.

“What are you kids doing here?” he asked when I smiled back.

Ignoring how uncomfortable you were, I told him, “We want to watch.”

“You're not twenty-one.” There was wonder in his voice. In his hand was his violin and its bow, looking a bit worn from love and age, but well cared for like yours were before.

I put on my most innocent face. “We're charming enough to be.”

Probably drawn by the sound of his laughter, one of his bandmate came back in and shrieked. He said, “You brought kids in here? You're gonna get us kicked out, you ass! On our first week!”

He put on a mock-offended expression. “Such a terrible accusation. What if these kids were just happen to be here, huh? Why does it always have to be because of me?”

“Because you're a menace!”

I cleared my throat to get their attention. “It's okay, we're not trying to cause trouble and you're not getting kicked out.”

Damian's bandmate scowled at me incredulously. “Yeah? And elephants could fly!”

“Hey now,” Damian cut off, “don't scare them like that.”

“No, no, really,” I assured them. “Because the owner of this place is my sister's best friend.”

Just then the curtain opened and there she was, Adel with her short curly brown hair walked in. Her surprise was replaced by a wide smile as she found me. Unaware to how silent the backstage suddenly was, she said to me, “Little Roo! Sam! What are you two doing here, you little rascals?”

We were sitting on a dark corner at the front while the band readied themselves, sipping to our glasses of iced tea, listening to Adel's friendly chatter the whole time, asking me about how our school was and what Luce had been doing these days. It was hilarious how utterly gobsmacked you looked.

“Did you know about this?” you hissed at me when Adel left to attend something else, ordering sternly—or at least as stern as Adel could ever be—not to go anywhere, especially not the bar.

I gave you a grin because you should have known better, because of course I did.

“Asshole.” You smacked me hard on my arm, but I laughed because I could feel your affection there in your slightest touch and I found myself yearning for it more and more each day. It should have been odd, that we were so casual and open with our affection when you didn't even want to be touched by other people, but instead it felt natural, as though you belonged right there on the chair next to mine, always.

The serenity didn't last long, as it never did, because right then the band started playing and I saw it clearly in your eyes, the weight of your longing. As if the whole world didn't matter except for the melodious tone of the violin, bow on strings, dancing in grace.

If I hadn't been sure of how much music meant to you, I would have been sure right then. Even though Damian missed the notes a little, even though no one else noticed his grimace, all that mattered to you was his music rang along with yours.

Later, when the bar was closing, people slowly walked out slurring or laughing, the band cleaning up their instruments. We were still sitting on our table, and I waited. I waited for something to happen, I wasn't sure yet what. I waited for you to say something because you'd been silent for hours. I waited. I waited. I waited.

Then, Damian came. Tousled hair and crooked round glasses perched on his nose, smiling, walking to where we were sitting. In his hand was his violin and his bow. I watched him. My heart was pounding so fast it was a wonder why it was still trapped inside my chest. You looked like you were about to get sick, Sam, color drained from your face and yet, in the same time, I recognized your soul kindling in your eyes.

“Come on, Sam,” he said to you, “let us hear you play.”

“But,” you protested softly, “it's your violin. Don't you mind?”

He just grinned wider and winked. “Next time, you bring your own, kid.”

You stood self-consciously from your seat and walked up to the stage with the violin and the bow in your hands. We watched you, small, uncertain, drenched in the spotlight as if you were made of gold.

This was your dream. I had told you once, years ago, that you would play on the stage someday and people would listen. Here were several people from the band, bartenders, some waitresses, and Adel who was wearing her perpetual smile even when she was tired. But you didn't look at any of them. Standing there, with your violin settled on the crook of your neck, you were watching me the whole time. I noticed the way you hands tremble, but as your stare collided with mine, you calmed.

Your strokes were true. With your eyes closed, I could only describe your play as something akin to melancholy. It was as if we were suspended in memories, in so many alternate universes and what-ifs, that I ached.

I ached for you, Sam, because deep inside I wanted you to have this, because I saw your movements and there was a voice inside my head telling me it wasn't possible for you to live without this. Maybe I'd known even then that you wouldn't survive without your music, without your strings vibrating against your bow and the tones which lay your heart bare.

There was only silence when you finished your piece and opened your eyes. Once again, you were my shy friend I met when I was eight, talking about music with such reverence, self-conscious as if you were afraid you'd done something wrong. There was a tint of blush across your face, sweat beads pooling around your hairline. Then something changed. Something was different, I thought, and I might know what it was.

Sam, at that time, looking at your slow smile and the pride obvious in the glint of your eyes, I swear your happiness lit up the whole room.

This, Sam, was where it started to go wrong.

*

**Monday, July 14 th, 2003**

“Do you like her?”

“Who?”

“Penny.”

I looked up from my assignments, finding you there in the middle of my living room, your violin and its bow hanging gingerly from your hands. You had been practicing harder as of late, what with our routine coming to Damian's place every few days and to Bright Night every weekend. You were scowling at me, but that was nothing new. You had always been the one with a bit of temper. So I did what I always did when you were on the verge of lashing out: I smiled.

“What brought this on?” I asked, because at that point, good months have passed well into our third term of the year. It seemed odd to bring up then when Penny had already gotten over her infatuation toward me and had started to consider me as one of her siblings. I didn't know if you could tell the difference. I wondered a little if you had been mulling over the topic for months before bringing yourself to say it out loud.

That year I had been thinking a lot about my father's question to me before—if we had any friends other than each other. We did have other friends, Sam. I wasn't lying, was I? Somehow it bugged me though, because maybe deep down I knew how codependent we were. But I was still fourteen, I hadn't known yet what a codependent relationship was like, so all I knew was the question bothered the hell out of me.

“You spend a lot of time with her.”

I huffed fondly. “Well, so do you, Sam. We go everywhere together.”

I watched the way you gritted your teeth and looked away. You put down your violin, walking to my kitchen to get a glass of grape juice then gulped it down quickly. I noticed how your hand shook while the other was gripping tightly onto the edge of the counter.

I set aside my work, waiting for you to explain more, but as you put the glass away and pick your violin back up, you still wouldn't say anything. “Sam,” I started, concern bubbling up inside me, “come on, what's wrong?”

“Nothing's wrong.”

But you still weren't looking at me. “You're upset.”

“It's nothing, Roo,” you told me stubbornly.

I wasn't having any of it. “Can't be nothing if you're this angry.”

“Haven't you seen me angry many times before?” I heard how low your tone had become and I got it. That was how you always sounded when you were about to snap. You would either attack your enemy or run, neither of which you'd ever done to me.

“I have,” I told you softly, “but never at me.”

You glanced back at me then. Guilt colored your eyes, more hazel now than dark brown.

Trying to ease it, I added, “I'm just worried about you.”

Your shoulders slumped then, as if you were exhausted of constantly being in a state of fight or fight, like you were resigned. I thought at the time maybe you had a crush on Penny and you didn't know how to tell me. You still didn't say anything even after minutes passed, so I thought that was it. I knew I could never get you to talk about the things you didn't want to speak of. Being friends with you taught me patience. I would wait until you were ready while reminding you that I was always around every once in a while, so I was prepared to let the topic go for the time being.

Right before I decided to get back to my assignments though, I heard you said, “It just frustrates me sometimes when you're being nice to everyone.”

I didn't get to reply because right the next second you were playing your violin loudly, almost violently, as if you were trying to drown my house in any sound other than the ones speaking inside your head.

*

**Wednesday, August 6 th, 2003**

Being good friends with Penny was incredibly easy. You must have noticed this, I know, but you weren't the only one surprised.

After meeting you, I had never felt the right connection with kids our age. Even though I was friends to many, sometimes I found it to be draining. No one clicked. I preferred spending time with you because you made everything better. You eyes were often shuttered, especially those past months, and you weren't okay some days, but you eased my loneliness like no one else could ever do.

Then, there was Penny, coming into our lives like a storm with her deep sense of loyalty and self-righteousness. Her apology to you continued on until months later, until somehow we began to spend time with her at school or at home. Not every day, just sometimes. I wanted to tell you that it felt pretty nice to have someone else who just clicked with us without us having to do too much effort.

Her moral set us straight, smoothing our rough edges, balancing out our seemingly desperate cling onto each other. The way she laughed at your sarcastic remarks, the way she smiled and told me when I was being too nice, the way she scolded you like I did sometimes. She fit, didn't she, Sam?

And yet, in the same time, she didn't.

It took me a long time to notice your silence. It was weeks after we took her into our fold. She was in my house with us, shrieking at my television as I beat her yet again on the console game we played. I laughed and laughed and laughed, failing to notice that you, Sam, were probably looking at me with anger flashing in your eyes.

You hadn't been to my house for days and I was worried. The last conversation we had had in our living room where you had asked me if I liked Penny kept looping in my head. Penny told me with a shrug, turning on the console game, “Maybe he's playing with other kids or busy doing something else. What do you want to play?”

I wasn't sure. She didn't get it. If it were any other person, I was certain I'd think that way, but this was you, Sam, and we had been inseparable since those first days we'd spent with each other, playing soccer at my backyard, a cast wrapped around your arm, but I didn't reply because there was no point. I'd confront you later, I thought, when you decided to come by.

Twenty minutes into the game, I could feel Penny's restlessness. I waited for her to mention something, but another hour passed she still wouldn't say anything. I realized suddenly that she was not you, that I couldn't wait for her to talk on her own terms, on the time of her own choosing the way I always waited for you and it made me feel a bit disoriented from this gap, because only then I realized how much I'd gotten used to being around you that I almost didn't know how to be around anybody else.

Casually, I asked her, “What is it?”

She glanced at me with wide eyes. “What's what?”

“What's wrong? You keep losing, I mean more than usual.” This earned me a kick to my leg.

She was fidgeting and I wondered the whole time what was it that she was thinking so hard about. Penny was hardly someone who kept something to herself. She always talked to us, or me, at least, when you were preoccupied, which was often enough.

After long minutes, she said slowly, “The girls in my class kept talking about kissing boys.”

“Did they?” I was still focused on the game, at least until she paused the game and I glanced at her, raising my eyebrow.

She fidgeted as if what she wanted to say next made her feel nervous. Then, cautiously she asked, “Want to try it out?”

It took me longer than it should have to understand what she was asking. If I were to be honest with you, Sam, I had never thought about it, or even wanted it, really, before you. The boys around us had started to talk about kissing and dating. They talked about girls, how pretty they were, how soft, how nice, and I wouldn't go as far as to deny that I didn't notice them, because I did, but I felt like an outsider for not feeling the excitement the way our friends did. I'd never had the interest to like them that way. It was such a foreign idea for me that I didn't care much even if I'd never gotten the chance to try kissing at all.

But Penny was looking at me with those eyes. I could tell she wanted so bad to try, just to see what it was like. I suppose I cared about her too much to disappoint her by rejecting the chance or entertain the thought that she would look for another boy to kiss, possibly one who would break her heart. You did use to tell me that I was so easily swayed by the people I loved, Sam.

“You are gentle, Roo,” you said to me, years later, when were sixteen and we had just yelled our voice hoarse because you ran to the solitude of your bottles too much on the days you felt as though your sadness was going to swallow you whole, too much that I saw glimpses of your parents in you and it scared me. It scared me because I wanted you here with me and yet you were trying so hard to retreat back into that dark corner where I couldn't follow.

“What's that got to do with anything?” My voice was high, cracking, shaking.

Your face was a blank mask and I despised it, despised the fact that you were hiding from me when you really didn't have to. You didn't look at me as you said, “Someday that gentleness would crush you.”

But I didn't know this yet, not back when I was fourteen, sitting right beside one of my only close friends who wanted to know what it felt like to be wanted.

So, reluctantly, I replied, “Okay.”

The hope in her eyes was choking me. “Really?”

She jumped a little when my finger touched her cheek. I watched the way her throat moved as she swallowed. In all honesty, Sam, I was worried I was going to mess up, but I ignored my irrational anxiety and leaned closer into her space, pressing my dry lips chastely onto hers carefully, waited for two or three seconds before pulling back. Penny looked at me as if in shock.

Then, she laughed.

No, it was more of a cackle, really, the way she threw her head back and just chortled. I should have felt offended maybe, except I wasn't. I laughed along with her until there were tears in my eyes.

“Oh, come on, was it really so bad?”

“So bad,” Penny wheezed, “So, so bad. It's like kissing my own brother.”

Which I had figured out before the whole fiasco, but I didn't say anything, only continued to laugh until my stomach hurt and I had to lean on the back of the couch.

I almost didn't notice the soft sound of steps from my front door, walking slowly as if not wanting to make sound, moving further away, and I froze abruptly because somehow I knew it was you.

I hurried outside after your shadow, calling your name, but you ran so fast I couldn't reach you. All I could see was your back and the glint of your blond hair under the late afternoon sun. I didn't know where you were planning to go because you weren't going across the road where your house was or to the direction of Damian's place which was on the complete opposite.

I didn't realize I wasn't wearing any shoes until after you were gone among the trees around the corner of the road and I had to stop chasing after you. Panting, I walked slowly back to my house in confusion, thinking why was it that you ran away from me, or where you had been, or if you had seen me kissing Penny just moments before.

Penny was standing outside the door when I was back. Her expression twisted a mix of shame and guilt, so much that she winced as she found me walking back alone. “It was him, wasn't it?” She groaned and put her face in her hands when I nodded. “To think that we were almost on good terms. I'm so dumb sometimes.”

I paused. “Are you guys dating?” And I felt a pang of pain in my chest because if that was true then it was awful, what I did, kissing his girlfriend when he wasn't around as if in secret. The thought made me hate myself, it stabbed at me and twisted, made me feel nauseated. If it was true, I didn't know if I'd ever forgive myself. I couldn’t think more than that. “God, he probably hates me now.”

Penny raised her head and looked at me oddly. “Why would he hate you?”

“Because I kissed you, Penny. And if you guys are dating—“

“We're not dating each other, Roo.”

I frowned, but I could feel relief slowly spreading inside my chest. “But he has a crush on you. Or at least, I suspect he does.”

It was funny, if I recall it now, the way she looked at me then. As if I was the stupidest idiot in the galaxy. When she talked next, her voice was wary, like she thought she needed to mind her wording, like she knew something I didn't, “He doesn't have a crush on me, Roo. And he doesn't hate you.”

“But every time I found him looking at me lately, he seemed to be pissed,” I insisted.

“Roo, he looks at you like you hung the moon. It's me he's pissed of.”

“What, why?”

With a sigh, she told me vaguely, “Well, I wasn't sure before, but I get it now.”

Penny left not long after. She wouldn't tell me what she meant at the time no matter how much I asked her, saying that I should talk about it to you later. She looked uncomfortable, so I didn't push. Instead, I sat in front of my television for hours, trapped in my thoughts, in the ever-present silence I'd forgotten since you came into my life, and I can tell you now, Sam, that those few days you didn't stay with me sucked.

I waited until late at night for you to come by, but you didn't. I considered going to your house right across and ask your parents about you, if you'd come back home safely, but I brushed the idea away. It was ludicrous to ask if you were home safe when the monsters stayed right there. I could still remember what they did to you the year before and I didn't know if I could ever forgive them for the things they'd done to you. Apparently, I can't.

I found you sitting on your bicycle outside my house the next morning, looking vacantly into nothing, waiting for me to come out so we can go to school together like we always did. I grabbed my bike and rode it next to you, quite unable to ease the bite when I asked, “Where have you been?”

You were unusually calm, Sam, and I wondered about that. You were rarely ever completely calm back then, unlike how you had been a couple of years before your last. There was always something that worried you, made you feel jumpy even when you were away from your home, something that kept you on edge. If I think about it now maybe you only managed to calm after you learned to ease your restlessness in the swings of your fist across other people's faces.

“I had other stuff to do,” you replied curtly, still not looking at me.

“Yeah? Like what?” You didn't reply and was going to start pedaling when I grabbed your arm. “ _Sam_.”

“Practicing at Damian's place.”

“You're lying,” I said, surprising myself, because in the whole time we'd been friends, you'd never lied to me once. Being difficult and evasive, yes, but never an outright lie, except maybe about your family because that was one line you let no one cross.

I noticed your wince before you pulled your arm back. I watched as you weighed your choices and I knew when there was the fight-or-flight tension on your shoulders again. It hurt me more than I'd care to admit, that somehow I'd turned into one of those people with whom you couldn't feel safe enough to relax even after everything we'd been through. You glanced at me. My pain must have been all over my face because all of a sudden your tension melted away, replaced by a sense of resignation which came more and more often each day. I hated that, knowing that I did that to you.

“I don't know how to fix this,” I admitted softly.

You exhaled a breath you'd been holding. “There's nothing to fix, Roo.”

“But there is,” I insisted. “It's different now. We're different somehow. You don't talk to me anymore and you hate being around me.”

“I don't hate being around you.” I didn't tell you, Sam, that I hated how resigned you had sounded, that I hated the chasm which suddenly appeared between us at the time.

“What did I do wrong?” Seeing the protest on your face, I continued, “Because I'm sure it's something I did. I just don't know what it is if you don't tell me. Being alone sucks, Sam. Not being with you is worse.”

There was a sharp breath intake coming from you, but I ignored it. I said quickly, “Is it because of Penny?”

“ _What_?” You sounded as though you were choking.

“Penny. You like her, don't you? You saw me kissing her yesterday. You asked me before if I liked her and I was being evasive I know and I'm sorry, it's not that I like her. I don't, Sam. She's like my own sister—“

“Roo.”

“—but I don't know why I can't just tell you that. It's just I keep thinking that maybe you had a crush on her and you wanted to tell me, but somehow you couldn't—“

“Roo!”

“—and it bothers me. I don't know why it bothers me, Sam. I imagine you both together and I feel sick, I—“

I can still remember that time as if it was yesterday, the way your lips had felt on mine, Sam. Dry, trembling with uncertainty. The way your fingers shook at the back of my neck when you pulled me closer, clammy with nerve, and I felt my heart stutter.

Maybe I should have felt repulsed, or acted on reflex and pushed you away, but I didn't. I let your lips lingered on mine until you silently pulled back, meeting me in the eye like I'd needed you to for the past few days. It couldn't have been more than two seconds, but it felt longer and I was struck speechless, unable to force my words out from my mouth, because of how completely different it felt. When I'd kissed Penny, it was only a press of lips and nothing, but being kissed by you made my skin pulled tight. My heart pounded hard inside my chest, so much that I felt like I could burst, so hard that it became difficult to breathe.

The way you looked at me then, Sam. The reverence and awe in your expression made my knees weak because when did this happen? No one else had ever looked at me like you did, as if I built up a whole empire with my willpower alone. As if you were a bunch of shattered pieces and I made you whole. As if I was the center of the universe in which you revolved around.

What Penny had told me finally made sense. I wondered then how it was possible that I couldn't see it before that moment, how much you wanted from me, how maybe your longing was the same as mine.

“Sam.” It was odd how my voice had sounded. Scratchy, as if I hadn't used it for a long time. It sounded more like a croak.

But you shook your head. You said to me, averting your eyes completely, busying yourself with your bike, “See you at school.”

I watched as you rode your bicycle away, thinking about you, about how your lips had tasted like, chasing the flavor as if it lingered on my lips still, but of course, it didn't. Thinking about how you had looked at me, how you had always looked at me all those years, what you'd meant, and finally, what it said about me that I wanted so badly to have it again.

*

**Thursday, August 7 th, 2003**

You told me you'd see me at school, but you didn't.

At first there was this flash of irritation, that you still decided to avoid even after that morning, or maybe, more after that morning. I was upset and it gave me a slight panic because I was rarely ever upset, wasn't I? You must have known this already, Sam, you knew everything about me.

But as I rode back home from school, waiting for you to come by at home, I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. You knew full well how I'd feel about being left alone without any news. I remembered the way you had run away as I'd called you and how unfailingly you had waited for me to come out for school the next day. You would never leave without telling me if you could help it.

Except when you couldn't, and when it happened, I was certain it had something to do with your parents.

I'll tell you now, Sam, that in my panic, I'd tried to call to your house's landline, which of course ended up in voicemail. No one in your house would ever pick up telephone, except perhaps you when you were home. We had no cellphones—we didn't need it anyway since we saw each other every single day—but that day was the first time I wished we had.

You weren't coming to school the next day either. On my way back to home, I stopped to stare at your dark house, always with its curtains closed. Sometimes, your mom forgot to turn on the lights of your front porch. On your neglected front yard I saw the abandoned tires and wooden boxes for I didn't know what which had always been there since years ago.

The mango tree in front of your house was bigger then because no one at your house had cared enough to fix it up. I remember once or twice over the years someone from the neighborhood would offer to cut some of the branches off because it could be dangerous for when there was storm, but there would be yelling and crashing involved, so later no one bothered to ask anymore.

Sometimes police would come by for an hour or two before they'd leave. I wondered why they couldn't just take your dad away. I asked you this weeks before—I know now it was such a shitty thing to ask, but I did anyway—and you gave me this uncharacteristically blank look that you always wore when we talked about your family. You said to me, “They have money. Both of them.”

I eyed the neglected yard and the paint which was peeling off your house's walls. “What money?”

“Money that lasts for many generations without having to work.” You hesitated. “From what I know, we came from a powerful family.”

I frowned at you. “What does that even mean?”

“I'm not sure. We don't really talk about it.” You scoffed as if it was funny. How ridiculous the idea was, that they would talk about anything with you.

“Why did you move here in the first place?” This was a question that had been plaguing me for years, but I could never bring myself to ask. After I knew the dark part of your family, I always forced myself to ask everything I thought I needed to know, no matter how pissed or uncomfortable it would make you feel.

“I don't know, Roo.” You sounded exasperated, or maybe pissed off, I wasn't sure.

“What do you know then?”

“That I came here to practice and relax, but you keep interrogating me!” You slammed your hands onto the living room table, our glasses of juice clattered with the sudden movement.

That wasn't the first outburst of yours, so I just blinked and touched your shoulder, waiting until finally you sighed and calmed, but the first time it had happened I was so surprised. You had looked shocked and then guilty as you walked out the door.

I sat right beside you after you calmed. “How are you doing, really?” And I knew you understood what I actually meant : how was your family doing?

You were gritting your teeth, your hands curled into fists, but I knew you would never hurt me. “Are you just going to keep on interrogating me, Roo?”

“I will until you give me actual answers.”

“What do you care?”

I bristled inside. “Oh, don't give me that. I'm the only one in this world who gives a shit about you, Sam, so don't fucking give me that.” I watched as your face crumpled, your fight dying along with it, so then came my guilt. You used to tell me that I almost never raised my voice, but I knew just where to stab.

Trying to soothe the moment, I added, “I'm worried about you, Sam. If it's up to me, I'd take you from that bad place and just put you here under my family's roof. Dad asked me about it once, you know? They'd love to have you here. You'll be safer here. But it's not up to me, is it?”

I saw you clench your teeth again. If I think about it, think about everything carefully now with clear eyes that I have now, Sam, perhaps I should have noticed then. Your potential. Every people alive have a potential of violence, but you, Sam, you were a wolf and I watched how you struggled every day to control your anger. You were constantly on the verge of explosion, sometimes even when you were with me.

I wonder if you'd noticed this about yourself. If this was one of the reasons why you'd decided to just end it, because the Sam I knew never wanted to hurt other people, even though you ended up doing just that many times over the years. Maybe one day you thought how fed up you had been, how you had had enough, how you didn't want to live with control barely within your grasp anymore.

“You can't.” Your voice was low and harsh and painful. “You swore, Roo. You swore to me.”

“I know.”

“You can't take this from me.”

Maybe you'd meant it as chance to make your family better, but what I heard was how I could never take your pain away from you. “I'm not going to.”

I had my camera and video recorders. It would be so easy, I thought, to just install them around your house. It would be all the evidence I needed to take that monster away, locking him up behind the bars for all eternity, but a sense of loyalty did strange things to people. It made you stupid sometimes, the way I was then.

After a while, your breathing turned normal again, and you told me softly, “It's not getting better.”

My heart twisted at the hopelessness of it. “What can I do to help?”

You scoffed. It was scratchy, like you were on verge of tears, but I knew you wouldn't. Cry, that is. They broke something in you other than your bones that night, something I realized I might never be able to fix. “Nothing, Roo. Just. Just stay here. Can you do that?”

“Of course, I can.”

“I need you to be here. Do you know that, Roo? This place is my home. You are my home.”

There were tears clogging up my throat and it hurt, Sam. It hurt to be here sometimes, it still does. “You are mine, too.”

When you held onto me, your arms around me, your fingers clutching tightly onto my T-shirt, your face and your hard breath on the crook of my neck, there was something—something unfurling. I didn't know why I didn't notice it then, why I didn't notice it before the kiss, that you needed so much more from me than just a friend.

What you needed from me, Sam, was everything.

*

**Friday, August 8 th, 2003**

Luce faltered in her steps inside the house. With a surprise in her voice, she asked, “Roo? What are you doing still up? Don't you have school tomorrow?”

Twenty-one at the time, Luce had been busy being an intern in a big architecture firm at the town center. It required her to drive for an hour and half each early in the morning and home late at night, which was stupid, right? I'd told her before. Because why wouldn't she just rent a flat near her workplace? We had a small fight over it since I knew the reason she stayed was me and I hated the fact that I was being some sort of hindrance to her future career. I would never want to be that. Not for her, especially, nor you.

Do you know what she had said to me then, Sam? She said, "Why would you ever be a hindrance? I'm here because I fucking want to see my little brother grow, you insufferable dumbass!"

And yet, she asked later where I'd learned all the curse words.

I can almost imagine you cackling like the first time I'd told you this story. You'd probably wipe your tears then say something like, “God, your sister, man. The best sister ever.” Then, later, after we finished playing games, you'd murmur, “I wish I had a sister like yours.”

I'd tell you, “You do, though. Isn't she practically your sister, too? The way she gushes over you every time you come over makes me wonder which of us is her brother.” And maybe, maybe, you'd smile because once upon a time you believed in my words.

But a few days after you're gone without any words, after I watched your dark house, considering if I should just come right up to your steps and ask your parents if you were okay, I couldn't sleep. I saw the window of your room on the second floor and it was always dark.

“You also have work early in the morning,” I pointed out to Luce which made her sigh.

“Yeah. _Ugh_. My back is killing me.” She yawned, opening the fridge for a carton of milk to drink straight from. She had this weird opinion, why would I use glasses to drink milk when I could drink it straight and not having to clean up the glass? Do you remember that one, Sam? You had agreed so wholeheartedly because you hated washing dishes. “Answer the question. What's wrong? Is it Sam?”

“He's gone.”

She stopped mid-gulp. “What do you mean he's gone?”

“He's not coming to school since two days ago.”

Luce shrugged nonchalantly. Her long brown hair fell down from its initial bun. It used to baffle you that she liked to wear her hair long because she was such a tomboy. "He probably overslept then thought, _whatever, I'll just take some day off_ , like he did last time."

“Yeah?” I couldn't quite mask the concern in my voice. “But last time he still told me he wasn't coming to school. And he still came here in the evening.”

Luce rolled her eyes. “Roo, you're not his mother. Maybe he wants to have life outside of you, you know? Maybe he's got a girlfriend now and wants to spend time with her without you crashing the party.” She gulped down the milk and scrunched up her nose. “Or a boyfriend maybe—”

“I thought at first it was because he'd kissed me a couple of days ago. Maybe he'd felt guilty or embarrassed or scared or I don't know—”

Luce choked on her drink, coughing and wheezing. “He did— _what_?”

“—maybe it's something I did, I—wait, _what_? What do you mean _'boyfriend_ '? How do you know about that?" I felt my eyes widen in shock. “Did he come out to you?”

“Rumon!” she yelled. “Shut up for a second.”

I did.

Putting away her carton of milk, crossing her arms, taking a deep breath, she finally asked, “Sam kissed you?”

I nodded reluctantly.

Luce closed her eyes as though thinking, _God have mercy_. “I should've seen this coming.”

I frowned, shifting on the couch, suddenly uncomfortable. “I didn't.”

“Well, you can be dense at times.”

I muttered under my breath.

“I didn't think Sam would get the balls to do it though. What had happened before that?”

I swear to God, Sam, that was one of the most awkward moments in my life. I'd do anything not to have it happened to me ever again. I cleared my throat and replied, “I kissed Penny.”

Now she looked like she was trying so hard not to laugh. “Come again?”

“She wanted to try it out....”

Luce fell over cackling.

“Not funny, Luce.”

“It is, though. Let me guess, Penny wanted to try it out with you because you're nice and you're one of her closest friends, so you did, but then Sam saw and he thought it was something more because you'd been spending a lot of time with her.”

I sighed in defeat. “Yeah.”

“Oh, my stupid and kind baby brother.”

I glared at her. “I get your point, so stop.”

She held up her hands. “So what's there to worry about? Just hunt him down and tell him you like him back.”

Now I was the one who sputtered. “Like—? Lucy—I—what? I'm not—I'm—how did you—”

She raised her eyebrow. “Well, did you like what he did?”

I didn't think to lie about it, but I was still worried. “I did, but....”

With more gentle tone, she said, “Roo, we're okay with that.”

“Who?”

“Who else? Me and Dad. We've known for years.” Before I could protest, she continued, “I mean, how could we not? Anyone who's seen you both together would know. He sees you like he worships the ground you walk on and you see him like he's the best thing since sliced bread.”

My mind churned. It was too much information at once. “But then, I'm—I like boys. You're okay with that?”

I saw it then, the way her expression softened. The small smile she wore, the serenity I felt. She said, “It doesn't matter who you love, Rumon. Nothing's going to change you from being my kind little brother.”

I exhaled the breath I didn't realize I'd been holding, laughing quietly, feeling giddy. My heart was pounding hard inside my chest and there were sweat all over my back. Only then I realized that I'd been out of my mind scared. I didn't think it through when we'd first started talking about this, what it meant for me, or if they'd accept me for who I was.

Maybe this was the main difference between us, Sam, that I had the privilege to think that my family might be okay with my newfound sexuality, unlike yours. I thought about your parents and winced. I didn't think the conversation would happen anytime soon.

I didn't know it yet, but I was right. You were almost at the brink when they found out, ready to leap into that void alone. I wonder, not for the first time, if it's one of the reasons why you put that gun in your mouth. Maybe the last months you were alive, you saw me in the eyes and was reminded only of the things you have lost.

“What am I supposed to do now?” I asked Luce.

She thought about it then said, “Wait until tomorrow, then we'll go.” To your place, she didn't say. The last time we'd been there was something we didn't want to relive. I knew my sister was still as angry as I was, maybe a little to me as well, because I was the one who had insisted on them not calling the social services.

But I didn't say any of those. I said, “Okay.”

*

**Saturday, August 9 th, 2003**

Turned out though, we didn't have to. Early in the morning, the sun hadn't even come out yet, you knocked softly on my window and I was already wide awake. I don't know why I didn't tell you then about my dreams—or nightmares—plaguing me at the time. They all came suddenly, not long after our school graduation.

But I didn't think of that when I opened the window because the first time I noticed when I saw you was your wince.

So many emotions whirled inside me; elation, joy, guilt, embarrassment, relief, but the moment I saw a new blue sling wrapped around your right arm and my concern eclipsed everything else.

“What happened to you?” I asked before you managed to say anything. I grabbed your good arm and helped you climb into my room. Your hair was messy, your eyes bloodshot, your T-shirt rumpled.

“Ah.” Averted eyes. Left hand wiping your neck and cheek. When you finally looked at me in the eyes, you said, “I fell.”

“Like hell you did!”

You let out a long-suffering sigh. “I didn't come here to talk about that.”

“It's him again, wasn't it? When did this happen? Did you—” I noticed with horror the past few days you must have locked yourself in your room. Usually when bad things had happened in your house, you'd run straight to my house. Waiting for the storm to pass, you'd say with tremble in your voice. You'd stay overnight until it was safe enough to come back home. You never stayed for more than two nights in a row.

When I asked you the day after what your parents had thought about you staying in my place, and all of the other times over the years you had stayed, especially those weeks after your mother's miscarriage, you'd laugh and say ruefully, “They didn't even notice I wasn't at home.”

“You should have come here!” I hissed at him, checking up the sling and the cast in panic. Inside me, my guilt was eating me up inside. It seemed that it was everything I felt the whole time we were together, Sam. Something I could never forgive.

“I can't—”

“Sam, you know you're always welcome here—”

“It's not that,” you cut me off, the quickly you added, “It's just—I thought about what I did to you the other day and—I don't—I'm not sure what you thought about that. I didn't mean to—I mean, I wanted to, Roo, but not like that. The point is I want to say—I'm sorry.”

“For what?”

“Did you not hear what I said?”

“I did, but you're not making sense. And you're talking too fast.”

Right at that second, you looked like you wanted to hit your head to the wall.

After taking a deep breath, with a tint of blush across your cheeks, I watched the way my bedroom light colored you. How soft it made you look. The mussed blond hair, longer then than it had ever been before, your hazel eyes, almost dark brown in the low light, the way you bit your lower lip and averted your eyes before settling them back to me.

Finally, you said, “It all gets fucked up. I meant to tell you first that I'm—” you coughed, "—gay. But. But I saw you with Penny and it messed with my head. I mean, I like you, Roo. I like you a lot, so I did that without thinking and—I don't know, maybe you don't see me that way. It's okay, I swear, we can be just friends like before, just, just don't hate me, Roo. _Please_. You're—you're all that is for me. So please. I'm sorry. Okay?”

I was still watching you, not saying anything. You'd grown taller than me, probably not more than five centimeters, but taller nevertheless. I wondered then how come I didn't notice that before. Maybe because we had been together all the time so we didn't look for the little changes.

Your Adam’s apple bobbed as you gulped down your nerve. Your eyes, Sam, you didn't know how much you eyes had haunted me, how they haunt me still. “Roo, say something.”

“I don't want to be friends.”

The pain in your eyes was so obvious that it hurt me, too. “Okay. Okay, Roo, I get it. I'm just—I'm sorry.”

“No, wait. Sam.” I held your face so it would keep facing me. You looked sad then angry and I wondered what it was you'd been thinking. Most likely you were just sad and you hated how weak it made you feel so you became angry. Always at yourself. Never at me. “Sam. Friends don't kiss each other.”

You closed your eyes, saying, “I know. It won't happen again, I swear. We'll play soccer, or games—like always.”

I shook your head until you opened your eyes. “I don't want that.” Before the hurt came back, I pressed my lips against yours. It was chaste, and dry, and brief, but firm. I pulled back and waited then, until you registered what it meant, until you understood me.

“Roo.” When you breathed out my name, there was that reverence in your voice again, as though you saw through me, Sam, and you saw me as something more than I was.

I felt my mouth curling with fondness, then let go of your face. You didn't move away. You kept on watching me with disbelief clear in your face, as if you were afraid of blinking and realized you were back in your dark room with parents who didn't care about you.

“But what about—”

I sighed. “It was nothing. Penny wanted to try and I couldn't refuse her puppy eyes.”

You frowned at my explanation then narrowed your eyes. “You have to refuse that puppy eyes from now on though.”

I threw you a wide grin. “Yeah?”

It surprised me when you pulled me into a firm hug, though I don't know why it did. You hugged me all the time since we were little. The hug was awkward because of the sling and I didn't know which part of your body was okay enough to be touched since I knew it couldn't have just been your right arm that was hurt, but I gave you the best I got. You sighed into my shoulder and the sound was as content as I had ever heard of you in years. It filled me with so much relief and joy I could almost burst.

“Okay?”

When you pulled back, your smile was bright and the sparkle in your eyes made it hard to breathe. You said to me, “I am now.”

Sam, you might not have known, but you had owned me even then.

*


	4. PART II

**PART II**

Iron Wolf

*

**Friday, November 5 th, 2003**

You once told me, when we were fourteen, what a gift it was to be able to play violin.

“It's not just the sound, Roo,” you told me that time, after you practiced playing the instrument at my house, your eyes alight with hopes and dreams which hadn't yet been crushed by your parents. “The vibration moves from my arms to my ears and to here.” You touched your chest fleetingly. “I can't explain it. It fills me up right into the corners of my being. I was empty before, but now I'm not.”

It was such a beautiful thing to say. You had this way of making beautiful things sad. You must have seen it in my eyes because you put away your violin to cup my face and kissed me softly. It was chaste and innocent, just like you were, so I wrapped my hand on the back of your neck to deepen it, surprising you by giving you everything I had. It was sloppy and new and exhilarating, but I wanted to have it so badly and I was tired of waiting. Your skin was almost too hot to the touch yet I craved it. I didn't know when it happened, just that I wanted you so much I didn't know what to do.

The year had passed by with us just hanging out the way we always did. The longer time passed though, it was apparent there was something there. Something different, like an undercurrent of electricity ready to be brought alive. I'm certain you felt it, too. It was in the heated way you looked at me sometimes.

You were still flushed and out of breath, sitting right beside me on the couch, our shoulders brushing. You cleared your throat, embarrassed, and asked, “Do you know what your gift is?”

I hesitated a little, but then I told you, “I can remember everything.”

You peered at me warily. “What, like, _everything_?”

“I have a photographic memory. I looked it up.”

“And that means what?”

I felt my lips curve with fondness. Patiently, I explained, “It means that I can remember everything I've ever seen, no matter how brief it was.”

You barked a laugh then slumped your head to the back of the couch. “Man, that's so convenient for tests! No wonder you always got perfect scores. That's so unfair.”

I grinned at you. “You're just jealous my gift is better than yours.”

You snorted loudly. “In your dreams, Roo.” You rested your head on your side, watching me, thinking. I waited until you said, “You've never told me this before.”

It wasn't a question, but a statement. “I haven't.”

You looked confused then. “Why?”

“Remember the dreams I told you about?”

“Your daily nightmares? The one with forest and fire and— _oh_.” I watched as understanding dawn upon your face, how you tried to cover up your horror under a calm mask, but I knew you too well already for it to be useless. You sat up. “You think the dream came from a real event?”

“I don't know,” I shook my head, answering you honestly, “I don't think so.”

“But you saw it almost every night.”

“Yeah.”

I regretted the confession immediately because of how sad you looked. You had noticed by then how exhausted I'd been. You'd known I almost never slept and when I did, I slept very lightly I heard your soft knocks on my window some nights you wanted to run away from your home.

This was my gift, but I knew everything about gifts as I was certain you did, too. There was always the downside. From your eyes, I knew you understood what I meant: sometimes you couldn't tell the difference between a gift and a curse.

I touched your cheek and smiled. “It's alright.

But you put your arms around me, pulling me into you. The night was silent, no sound came other than the muted conversation in the television, and we were on our own inside our little world. I held you in my arms so tightly I wondered why you didn't flinch from how painful it was. The warmth of you, the fleeting scent of your soap, sweat, and shampoo. I wanted to drown myself in all of it, I wanted to drown myself in you.

This is one of the memories I have so vivid inside my mind, Sam. How it hurts me to remember because these are doors, upon doors, upon doors, upon doors. And I am waking, crashing into one room to another. My memories are a series locked up doors that I know are there but I don't want to open anymore. I find myself running after you, after your laughter which sounded as crisp as the autumn leaves under my boots. You told me years later that your dream had died along with the cracking sound of your bones as they broke inside your left arm, but me, I still held mine tenderly inside my arms.

“It is such a gift,” you said to me ruefully after a long silence, “to be held by you.”

But I didn't believe you. How could I? There was no glory in the coldness of my arms, no serenity in the shape of my unsmiling face, no peace in how hard life turned me to be. I was always the void, but you, Sam, you were supposed to be the blinding light.

Sometimes you can't tell the difference between a gift and a curse.

*

**Saturday, January 29 th, 2005**

Late January of 2005, fifteen and filled with too much longing, I ran after you as I heard you laugh right in front of me, clutching your violin case in your arms.

It was Saturday night and so we went to Bright Night in Damian's car the way we used to, but that time there was an important difference. He shook his head fondly when he saw me wrapping my arm around your shoulders, grabbing your head, stopping you on your track, and ruffling your hair messy as you chortled still. You wheezed, _Roo_ and _stop_ and _God, please, you're ruining my hair! How am I supposed to perform looking like this?_

There was an important difference, Sam, because that would be the first night you had ever performed, and you didn't know this yet, but it would be the last.

The three of us were still laughing inside Damian's car and I wish I could stop it. Stop the time and make you look at me again, Sam. Tell you not to go there, tell you not to listen to me when I'd tried to encourage you and assure you that you'd do just fine, because haven't you played the song hundreds of times before?

Tell you to ignore me, ignore the way I'd looked at you with stars in my eyes because I'd adored you, Sam, because I'd loved you so much even then. Ignore the way I'd kissed the corner of your lips in a dark corner at the back of the bar discreetly. Ignore the way I'd bumped at your shoulder when your steps had faltered at the backstage, grinning cheekily, making you blush. Ignore me, Sam, don't listen to me. Don't listen to me.

“Roo,” you breathed out, almost a small whisper, as though it was a secret, “I'm scared.”

I close my eyes and picture how I touched your cheekbone fleetingly, you were ten or fifteen centimeters taller than me then, smiling and waiting for you to smile back.

With as much naivety of a fifteen-year-old boy could have, unaware of its capability of destroying someone else's life I said, “Don't be.” Like there wasn't anything to be afraid of. Like there were no monsters in this world.

I said, “I'm always here, aren't I?” Like I could afford to always be there to save the day, to save yours, always yours because it was the only one that mattered.

I said, “Do it.”

I said, “Prove it to them.”

Sam, how it hurts me to remember your grin before stepping onto that stage.

I want to take it back. I want to scream, take it all back. I am suddenly there again, sitting on the front table with Adel, my camera ready, willing myself not to shake so much. The bar was crowded as it always was on Saturday nights. The band was checking the sound. Damian was holding his violin, speaking in a low voice to you right beside him. You nodded, attentive, excited, nervous, blinding, and mine. A moment so perfect if only time stood still, if only it never moved further ever again.

My therapist told me it wasn't my fault. That night wasn't my fault. But she didn't know, nobody knew, not even you because I didn't tell you, because my guilt was eating me up inside. In my dreams in the weeks before, I'd seen this exact scene, watching you on the same stage from the same table, taking pictures of you which you'd planned on showing to your parents later on because maybe then they'd sober up from their unceasing stupor finally see you.

It was a terrible idea. Oblivious, unaware, naïve children that we were, Sam. I didn't tell you what would happen next because I solely believed it was just a nightmare, because you knew nightmares were all I had. I couldn't. I wanted to believe what you believed. I wanted you happy because I would be happy only if you were.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, patrons of Bright Night,” the singer began with a smile. “We'd like to thank Adel here for hiring us—again—because without her we won't be standing up here again judging you guys.” The patrons laughed. Even I found myself smiling. “You're wonderful, Adel, I hope you realize.”

“Stop kissing ass!” Adel shouted then laughed out loud.

“Okay! So in order to celebrate our anniversary here, we'd like to introduce our newest member. He'd been taken under Damian's wings for more than two years. Say hi to Sam, guys.” Murmurs and giggles filled the room. No one was a stranger to us anymore. Of course they'd already known you. We sat on the same spot every Saturday watching the band play. Sometimes Adel sat with us, sometimes she didn't.

“Congratulations, Sam!” one of the patron yelled.

You cleared your throat and replied thank you. The grin was still plastered on your face. The crowd cheered loudly, some whistled, some saying _awwwww_. I took everything in, Sam, the way you laughed, the way you replied to each of their comments.

This was how I'd always pictured you, Sam, even now, in these small moments, when you had overcome your shyness and talked to people like they were old friends, how they adored you, how friendly you were, how happy. When silence hadn't seeped too far into your soul that you rejected the presence of any other human being. When you hadn't told me that you loved being alone too much that it hurt you physically to even try getting close to anyone ever again. When you hadn't lost your identity and so you made a new one, calling yourself a lone wolf, calling me the same. When you hadn't wanted so bad to get away.

The band started playing and the time when both Damian and you started playing each of your violins, I felt like weeping. My chest felt full and suddenly I understand what you'd meant when you'd said why it was a gift. What it felt like to be filled with light after being so empty for so long.

People started dancing right away. Adel stood and laughed, asking me to stand up and dance with her so I did. I recognized the music arrangement sounded like groovy jazz music from 1940s, complete with the trumpets, the piano, and the violins. I twirled Adel around and she squealed, laughing louder as she moved cheerfully. Some of the patrons danced along with me. I was giddy with energy, with the newness, with life.

My eyes found yours in the midst of movements. The strokes of your bow was as expressive as how you looked like then: grinning, your body moving freely along with the beat of the music, your eyes dancing. At that moment, everything stopped, Sam. The sound, the movements, the time. In my space was only you, Sam. How you'd looked so, so alive.

When the performance was over and the singer was saying thank you, I ran to the backstage to meet you. I wrapped my arm around your shoulders, laughing even as the other band mates complained good-naturedly about kids who wouldn't stop wrecking things at the back—which made us laugh louder and Damian shake his head again.

Later, in his car, from your place at the passenger seat, you told him quietly, “Thank you, Damian.”

He glanced at you, then back to the road. “What for?”

“For tonight. For this. For giving me a chance.”

I saw his soft smile reflected on the rearview mirror from the backseat. “Kid, the only reason you managed to go this far is because you're good at what you're doing.”

Your voice was choked and small when you asked, “Yeah?”

“Yeah, Sam.”

“Even though I'm just a kid?”

Damian chuckled. “You know no one cares how old you are as long as you do well.”

My eyes blurred. From the way you discreetly wiped your face, I was certain you felt it, too. I put my arms around your shoulders from the back of your seat, smiling, whispering, “I'm so proud of you, Sammy.”

Silence filled the spaces of the car, but there was peace in it, and so was in all of us.

*

**Saturday, January 29 th, 2005**

It was when we bid each other goodbye after your first performance that I should have noticed. How you slurred your words a little. How you laughed a little too loud. How you constantly smiled over nothing as if you were content. How subdued the drive back was. The faint tint of flush. The sparkle in your eyes. It should have been obvious, but I didn't know what I had been looking so I didn't notice. You were filled with liquid of courage, walking into your dark house in the middle of the night with violin case slung around your shoulders.

The happiness eclipsed everything else, blurring my rational thoughts. There were things I could have done better. I could have told you about the dream. I could have reminded you to give the violin to me so I could keep it safe. I could have told you to just stay overnight at my place. I could have noticed earlier that you had had alcohol in your system. I could have done a lot of things I hadn't done.

My therapist had told me that I should write down these events, these regrets on paper. _As closure_ , she'd said, _so you could move on_. But I'm writing this down and I keep picturing in my mind the way you lay in the hospital, the way you had crumbled in your room then, months later, in that physical therapy room. The way you had punched those boys, the way you had wheezed when you wanted to cry but tears wouldn't come so you turned into anger because it was familiar.

I feel the unfairness of this, of writing everything down so I will be able to close this chapter, never open it again, and start over someplace new. The ridiculousness of it, because if there was anyone around here who needs a start over, it would be you, Sam, but then you were nowhere around here anymore to start over anything. She told me that as though I could forget you like you were a bad chapter when you were a whole book of my life, embedded so deeply into my memory that I could not recall what it was like to spend a day without your blond hair glinting under the sun.

There is this gap between the time before and after your death, like the time after never feels quite real. I've seen the scene of your last day over and over in my mind. Some nights I'd wake up to the sound of gunshot. Some nights I'd wake up standing in my living room, my arms outreached as if trying to grab someone. Some others I'd wake up thinking if only I'd stopped you from going home that night, maybe none of this would happen.

But the fact is I let you home with soft smile on my face, a quick kiss on your lips, my fingers in your hair. I watched as you walked back into your house before I finally got in mine and went to my room to rest. The fact is everything had happened and there is nothing I can do to change it.

At first, there was a loud crash, then a series of yelling, then your scream. This was what woke me from my two-hour sleep, Sam. Your scream. Because even when your father had beaten you up years before, you had never screamed. Not once.

I ran to my front door, a metal baseball bat in my hands, my heart was thundering inside my chest so hard I felt sick. From my front porch I could see the lights in your house were on. There was yelling again and another crashing. I couldn't hear your long scream anymore and it scared me more than anything, Sam, because of what it would imply.

My father was far away in another country and Luce was rarely ever home nowadays as she was basically living with her boyfriend at that point. There was no one to stop me, Sam, to grab me by my shoulders and tell me to _think, Roo, think, don't do something reckless_.

Without thinking, I jogged barefoot to your place, past the tree, past your neglected front yard, onto your front porch with its jagged and bent railing from the beating you had received years ago. I opened the front door.

I wasn't thinking, Sam, I wasn't. There was a rush of blood in my eyes, so loud I couldn't quite process what I was hearing or seeing. Everything was in a slow motion. I saw the monster stomped his foot violently, repeatedly down the floor, as though throwing tantrums. Your mother with her arms around his raised right arm, the crash that happened when he pushed her away. Their mouths were moving. Maybe they were yelling, but I couldn't hear what they were saying. Still, the monster stomped on the floor, his boots made everything inside the house rattle.

It must have been less than a second because they haven't noticed me yet. I frantically looked all around the room and I couldn't find you anywhere. I was about to let out a breath I'd been holding, at least until I saw you there, lying on the floor where he had been stomping on. Then a sharp smell of iron.

There was something awful happening, but my mind couldn't process what I was seeing to keep up with what my body understood. Something bloody lay limply on the side of your head. It was spiked with black and white things all over, its shape almost unrecognizable. But here was the thing about my body, Sam, it recognized horror even before I did.

I wasn't thinking. Maybe I'd screamed. Maybe I told your parents to fuck off. Your mother looked more frightened than I'd ever seen her. There was no vacant stare in her eyes now, only tears that never seemed to stop. Your father was going to strike me, Sam. I saw it in his crazed eyes, how he raised his hand, and I was just a boy, Sam, shorter than you and possibly half his size, so I swung my bat and knocked him cold. I wasn't thinking. I wasn't thinking what damage it could leave.

But you were lying there, unmoving, unconscious, and my hands trembled with fear. Overwhelming fear that you wouldn't wake up anymore, even though I called your name. I said, _Sam, hey, Sam, wake up, man. It's Roo. It's Roo, I'm here now, open your eyes. Sam_. You didn't open your eyes. I didn't think time was even moving.

Someone else must have taken over my body because I was watching as I walked to your kitchen isle and dialed up the nearest hospital for an ambulance. I calmly informed them your address then hung up. With a clean towel, I crouched and wiped the blood on your face gently. I couldn't quite bring myself to see your left arm again, or what was left of it. I couldn't think what it would mean.

When the ambulance came, I still wouldn't leave your side. I realize now that this part must have been absent from your memory because you'd been unconscious the whole time. You only knew it from what I told you later, which wasn't much, because my hatred choked me from saying anything else. Toward your parents. Toward myself. But your mother must have been leading them inside to where you and your father had been lying unconscious, saying things like it was sudden, that the burglars just barged in and ruined everything.

I watched them carry you. Your mother followed them, but I was frozen still on where I'd been standing. At least until one of the crew touched my shoulder and asked me if I was hurt anywhere because there was blood on my hands and on my shirt. All that blood and they all belonged to you. I felt sick.

“You're going to the hospital with us, okay?”

“But—” My voice wouldn't quite work, I had to clear it to try it again. I couldn't even recall if it was a male or female, what they looked like. “But I'm okay, this isn't—isn't my blood.”

“Let us check on you in the car. What's your name?”

“Roo.”

“Okay, Roo, walk with me into the ambulance because we haven't got much time. Then we'll check, okay?” And I found myself nodding because it was much easier.

Inside the car, your mother was sobbing right beside where you were lying and I wanted to yell at her because it was my place there beside you. When they asked me later, after long hours of surgery, if I was a family of yours because only family was allowed to visit you into your room at least until tomorrow I wanted to yell at them that I was more your family than that woman inside your room would ever be. I wanted to yell about the unfairness of everything. I wanted to yell at them how I just wanted you to be happy, it was all I ever wanted, how I wanted it more than anything. _Anything._

But I didn't. I just nodded and walked away to a phone booth, dialing numbers I'd known by heart and called my father first then Luce next. I explained to them the situation. My voice was too calm. I noticed this, noticed how unnatural it was, but I couldn't do anything about it. I watched as life passed me by, trapped inside a limbo of my own making, because if time didn't pass for you then it shouldn't pass for me either.

“Rumon.” My father's sad voice brought me back. I imagined this was how he'd sounded like many years ago, when my mother's health was failing and Luce had called him crying from the hospital. She was yelling hysterically that he should come there, that he should have been there with her because she was just fifteen and I was just seven and we have just lost a mother and he should have been there, not all the way out in other country running from the sadness just because he couldn't deal with because it wasn't fucking fair.

I realized with a strange jolt that I was fifteen then, the same age as hers when our mother passed and I wondered how she was able to cope with it—with loss—because I kept seeing you in that hospital bed and imagined how maybe you would never open your eyes again. They crushed me, these thoughts.

“Yes, Dad?”

“You said you've been in the hospital since early morning of Sunday. It's 8 PM there now, isn't it? Have you eaten anything?”

I haven't, but I didn't have appetite, so I didn't reply. They had just brought you back to your room fifteen minutes ago because of the surgery. I didn't want to think about it, about how you'd wake up and see what you'd lost. I couldn't decide which was worse. The nurse had shaken her head no, family only, family only.

“Have you called Luce?” he asked. “Look, Roo, I'm booking a ticket home now, okay? I'll be there.”

I wanted to say that it didn't matter whether he was there or not, it wouldn't replace the thing you'd lost, but I didn't say this because I knew he came from a good place. I don't know if you knew this before you left, but my father has always seen you as his own son, Sam, no matter how stilted and awkward his affection was.

“Roo? Are you there, son?”

I croaked, “I don't know what to do, Dad.”

“Call Luce first. I'll be there soon, I promise. Okay?”

“But, Dad, _Dad_ , who would I be without him?”

His silence was familiar to me, after all, my personality mostly came from him, while Luce's came from our mother. I knew he was looking for the right words to say, but there weren't any because nothing would make what had happened to you okay, Sam, nothing. So, he said to me softly, “You will still be my dearest son, Rumon.” And I couldn't help the tears that fell because of how awful it was that I got to keep my identity while you'd just lost yours.

Luce came two hours later, eyes red and swollen from all the crying I knew she had done. Her bun was a mess on top of her had, hair falling askew everywhere. When she reached me, she held me for so long, so tightly that it was painful, but it was the kind of pain I didn't mind.

I didn't see her boyfriend anywhere. To be completely honest, I didn't like him all that much. He scowled a lot and always seemed to disapprove the fact that Luce set me—and therefore you—as her priorities no matter what, but Luce liked him a lot so I didn't complain. I had to ask, “Where's—?”

She pulled back and looked at me in the eyes with this stern look on her face, one she wore when she was being adamant. “We broke up.”

“What—”

“I dumped that asshole. He told me not to go here. I told him you both needed me, but he's not listening! Disgusting fucking prick!”

“Luce—”

“Just so you know. Both of you are more important than anything else. Do you understand? That asshole is nothing. Nothing!” Fresh beads of tears rolled down her cheeks and I felt her loss like it was my own. It took me years, Sam, years to realize why it was that we were inexplicably drawn to each other and why she cared about you so much even though she mostly knew you through me. People who were lonely usually found one another. So I found you, I brought you to her, and we were suddenly one in our loneliness because we understood it well.

“How is he, Roo?” she asked after she calmed down. She was usually the practical one. The one who bought tissues and drinks and rubbed your back as you sobbed into your hands, but at that time she looked like a wreck. I wondered if I looked like I'd seen the same hell.

“Stable for now,” I replied. “They're going to perform another surgery midnight.”

Luce looked up at that. “What surgery?”

I could feel her stare boring into my neck, but I wouldn't look back at her because then I might break and I couldn't have that. With difficulty, I said, “For his left arm.”

Her gasp was low. She looked so small in her frame, clamping down her mouth as though trying to hold back a scream. I understood full well what it felt like. “Will he be able to—”

Of course, she knew to ask that. She understood you like I did, if not more. “Don't know yet.”

For long minutes there was only the soft sound of her sniffling. I wanted to do it, too. I wanted to crumple into a ball of paper and just weep until you told me you were better, but I kept myself stoic, until later she asked, “Have you seen him?”

“Not after we arrived in the hospital, no.”

I knew from how fast the scowl appeared that she was furious. The way her fists shook and the way she gritted her teeth. Luce was a warrior. Growing up, she had always been my hero and I realized then she was still. How she was angry on my behalf touched me in a way no one ever could.

I grabbed her arm when she stood, shaking my head.

“You're more his family than that bitch ever was,” she hissed before strolling to the reception. Her voice was high to the point of hysterics as she asked for the explanation why her brother wasn't allowed to see someone he loved.

Not long after, Luce dragged me into the room where your mother sat beside you. Her eyes swollen and scared when she saw us barging in. Where you were lying, your face pale as if you were already a ghost, floating around the world, not quite living anymore. The sight of your bandaged left arm made me sick, as though vomiting would never quite cut it.

“You have five fucking seconds to explain to me why my little brother was not allowed to come in here!” Luce screeched, pointing onto your mother. Her face was colored in disgust.

“I'm sorry, ma'am,” the nurse cut in. “This woman wouldn't listen when I tried to explain—”

“It's quite alright,” your mother said. Her voice shook a little. I wondered then if she had noticed. “These two are as much family as I am.”

“Are you sure, ma'am?”

“Yes, I'm sure.”

After the nurse left, Luce began to rant about everything. About how shitty of a parent she had been and how she despised every corner of her being, but I tuned it all out, letting them talk or shout at one another, I couldn't care less. I walked to your right side and sat beside you, watching the slow breathing of your chest, the smooth shape of your face as if there was nothing in the world could hurt you.

Except there was something, wasn't it, Sam? You weren't as invincible as we thought you were. There was always something which could hurt you. Or someone. I caressed the mass of blond hair falling across your eyebrows. There was a bandage around your head and I imagined you'd hate the headache that would come with it. Usually, you would wear your hair in upright spikes and I liked it as much as you liked me keeping my jet black hair long, past my ears so you could curl them around your fingers when we sat side by side.

The noise ceased as I put my hand your right hand. It wasn't as heavily bandaged and casted like the left arm, so maybe we could hope but I didn't know what to think, or what to say. So I just kept my mouth shut as I watched you sleeping, wishing you would wake up and see me. See that I was there the way I'd promised. Forget that perhaps I'd been too late. Forgive me, maybe, even if I didn't deserve it.

“He asked him for the violin,” you mother started, but I didn't stop my caress to the back of your hand, I didn't acknowledge her at all. “My husband—he asked Sammy to give him the violin he'd been hiding or he'd be sorry and Sammy just wouldn't—” she choked, then sobbed and I hated her, Sam. I hated the way she seemed so frail because I could imagine you trying to protect her.

It made sense to me because no one ever saw you like I did. I wondered then if this was how she'd convinced you to stay, not to report anything to anyone. Show a little bit of desperation and sobriety just to convince you that she loved you before going back to alcohol and needles to forget everything sucked. I wondered if you noticed how selfish she was, or if you accepted it as it was and decided right then it was better than being treated as though you did not exist.

“I'm sorry,” she sobbed, pitiful like she was, “I'm so sorry.” To whom she was apologizing to, I could not comprehend.

“Did you know that he always practiced at my place?”

“Yes. Yeah, I did. Usually, I was the one who kept an eye on the door, making sure my husband was asleep. I didn't—I didn't think my husband was actually awake last time.”

I nodded. With bright eyes and excitement in your veins, I knew you'd probably not been as quiet as you'd always been when you'd slipped into your house. “Did you know yesterday was his first public performance?”

The bafflement on her face made me want to punch something. “Performance?”

“Yeah, Mrs. Brown. He just got recruited by a band he'd idolized for years. Yesterday was his debut. He said it's all he ever wanted. He said it was such a gift to be able to play at all.”

Pale cheeks, pale lips. Bewildered shining eyes and a choked sob. She cried into her hands, it seemed as if it was everything she did.

But I wasn't looking at her anymore. I was looking at you. How peaceful you looked. I wondered if death wasn't a mercy for someone like you. Finally, I asked her, “What did the doctor say, Mrs. Brown?”

She shook her head as if she couldn't believe it. As if by not saying it, she would make it not real. But I played the scenes over and over again in my head, the way that monster stomped on your arm like you were a pig and this woman did nothing.

Pity left me, leaving me cold and numb. I felt Luce's stare at me, as angry as I was, but she let me say what I needed to say. “What did the doctor say? Can he still play?”

The way she crumpled onto the floor in a hard sob was a clear enough answer.

*

**Monday, January 31 st, 2005**

“Not at all?” you asked the doctor a couple of days later, right when you'd come back to the land of living. Your voice a monotone. Luce was talking to my father and your mother outside, but I couldn't imagine what it was about. Right then, there was only you, Sam.

The doctor flipped your file and shook his head at you regretfully. “There's physical therapy you need to attend twice a week. With some work and time, we can make your left arm work the way it used to.”

“But I'm not going to be able to play violin?” you insisted. Your right hand curled tightly around your cover. “Not at all?”

“You can still play, but I cannot promise you that you can do it as well as you did before. There are some adjustments we had to add to your left arm. Your bones were broken into seven parts, shattered in five places—”

“So, you're saying the pins and staples in my bones wouldn't allow me to play well?” From where I was sitting beside your bed, I touched your hand. The shaking stopped, but you wouldn't uncurl your fingers. Your eyes never left the doctor. They were more hazel now, close to yellow, and so void of any emotions which I wasn't used to. I used to be able to read your expressions well, but maybe it was because you thought there was no point in trying to hide from me. Seeing how cold you could be made something inside me twist. Perhaps, it was guilt.

The doctor looked a bit reluctant. I got it, of course. People did it all the time, giving other false hopes, and in his profession he wasn't supposed to do that. He was supposed to tell the fact as it was, albeit kindly. “We could try, but—”

“Then, that's all I need, doc. If there's a possibility, I'll take it.”

He studied you the way people did when they heard you talking and thought of you as an enigma. I couldn't imagine why they would. For me, you had always been easy to understand. Finally, he nodded and patted your covered legs with a small sympathetic smile before he finally left to attend another patient.

You glanced at me after, looking at me but not quite seeing me. I could hear your mind working, your helplessness seeped into me like it was my own. I gripped your right hand until you focused back to me, then I smiled. I told you, “We'll make it work.”

You gave me a small smile and I don't know why I'd missed that it had looked so very sad, because maybe even then, you'd known.

* 

**Wednesday, February 3 rd, 2005**

Your father left the town for around six months. Being called by the big family, as your mother had muttered to you in the midst of her perpetual high.

Luce came back living in my house and had to drive more than an hour to her work, but she didn't complain. She had decided it was good if you lived with us from then on after you were allowed to go home, which I knew you'd wanted to protest, but her face turned awful, like she was on a verge of tears, as she said, “Sam, just shut up for once, okay? Shut up and do what we say for once.” So, the next day, you moved into our guest room and in the morning you were sitting in our dining room, eating breakfast as if you'd been there your whole life.

The physical therapy sessions were terrible at first. You couldn't move your left arm at all and once or twice I saw your eyes watered in frustration. I had to be the one who called Damian and explained to him the situation. He came by to my place a couple time a week to see how you were doing, but I could tell it made it harder for you. You started hiding yourself in the guest room on the days he came by. I wanted to explain it to him but by the rueful smile on his face I knew he understood why.

The therapy days came twice a week but not once you chose to ditch it. Until finally, after a little more than three months you started making a significant progress, lifting objects and carrying them around. Your face lit up with it, and mine with yours.

Each night, after you kissed me senseless, groaning and panting my name on the living room couch, you never failed to open the case of your violin that you'd taken back to my place. There was reverence in the way you touched it, the same one I recognized every time you touched me. I'd press my lips to your left fingers and you would shudder. We'd walk through the halls, where the guest room was, but you'd never stayed there. You slept curled next to me in my room, without words, always.

We were sitting on my front porch, four months after the incident, a week after I found you drinking alone under that mango tree. I'm thinking now they were probably the most peaceful months of your life because I saw it in your face. I saw how you relaxed there as though it was right where you belonged and I found myself wishing those days would never end. Maybe soon, you would be able to play your violin again. I believed with my whole heart that someday you'd get it back. Your soul, I mean. And I couldn't wait for it to happen.

Six months and four days. You father didn't come back. Your mother was rarely ever sober anymore that you had to come into your house every evening just so she'd remember to take a shower and eat. Six months and five days. The physical therapy was going well, but you picked up your violin, the sound you made was stilted, sharp and angry, and it was still not enough.

Six months and nine days. We were at school. Everything was fine. We smoked cigarette every day. You needed to sit under that mango tree drinking some nights, I'd grab your bottle on some days you drank too much, but everything was fine.

Until six months and nine days, I heard a commotion about a brawl in the locker hallways and I walked calmly around the crowd who shouted and cheered.

Six months and nine days, I saw a glint of your blond hair in the middle of the crowd.

Six months and nine days, there were blood on the knuckles of your right hand and a fist of bloodied T-shirt in your left hand. The right fist came down over and over onto the boy under your mercy. For a second I thought there were claws. Your eyes were a cold pair of hard stones. The faint smell of blood.

Six months and nine days. The day you decided to give up.

*

**Sunday, May 8 th, 2005**

Peace had never stayed long, not with us. Or with you—at least that was what you had always told me throughout our teen years while you were taking a long drag of your cigarette, a half-empty bottle of whiskey in your lap. You rarely ever wore your hair in spikes anymore. I remember the first time I found you drinking hard in the evening, under the gigantic mango tree. You weren't even trying to hide. We were fifteen, it was months after the incident. I'd known you'd taken up smoking from the time before the incident, something you'd done in secret as though you'd thought I wouldn't find out and figured what it had meant. You'd rarely answered me when I asked how your family had been doing that year, but it didn't matter, I'd learned to hear answers in your silence.

I opened my palm up in front of you. You glanced down at it, then up at me. Question in your eyes.

“Give me the cigarette,” I asked you, then I saw the conflict in your eyes, the way you wanted to protest, so I added, “Just one of them. I want to try.”

You laughed. It sounded odd and unhinged, the way it always did after the incident, but you took a piece and handed it to me as I took a seat right beside you, taking a drag to get it lit, then coughed violently. It was vile and bitter, with a hint of strange mint at the tip of my tongue. I chased the cool taste and noticed the way you watched my lips moved, before slowly dragging your eyes back to mine. “It's menthol.”

“What?” Licking my lower lip, my voice was scratchy with desire. I wondered if you'd noticed then. You could read me like an open book, so you probably did.

You smiled at me softly. “The mint aftertaste. I like this brand because of the menthol.”

“Oh.” I took another drag. It still made my eyes water and I still coughed a couple of times, but it got easier as I found the way to do it right. “So, why are you sitting here alone, smoking and drinking, in the late evening, right where I could see you instead of someplace I didn't know like you did before?”

“Ah, you knew about that, huh?”

“Give me some credit.” I wanted to snap, but the words fell flat from my mouth.

“I always give you all the credit, Roo.”

I didn't have an answer for that.

“Maybe I want you to join me,” you told me when I didn't reply.

“Finally,” I muttered to myself.

“Don't get mad, Roo. I'm just trying to spare you my angst, which basically is all I have these days.”

I could feel my insides twist at your words, the way you so nonchalantly said it, as if it didn't matter anymore. At the time, I was so frustrated I wanted to yell at you not to give up, that the therapy might not work that time, but there were other ways we hadn't tried yet, weren't there? But I knew you, Sam. I knew what you'd say.

So, I said instead, “If keeping up with your angst means I get to be with you then I'd like to be here.”

The bottle paused on its way to your mouth, it shook a little because you held it with your left hand. With low voice, you asked, “Oh really?”

“Sam, don't be stupid. Of course, I do.”

“I'm afraid of being a bad influence. Luce and your dad would kick my ass for it.”

“You're not.” You glanced at the cigarette around my fingers and gave me an ironic smile, so I insisted, “You're not.”

The way you shrugged was maddening.

Long, silent minutes later, with cigarettes out and the bottle of whiskey finally empty, I saw how flushed you were. You had this dopey smile on your face that was entirely too soft to be your usual one, that I figured you were most likely drunk, then realizing how much of drink it took you to get intoxicated told me that that wasn't the first time. There were times, of course, during the violent explosions of your father that he'd mentioned about you messing with the stash. I suppose right then I understood what it had been all about and I didn't know what I felt right then. There was anger and a sense of betrayal beneath everything else as I thought of all the things you'd apparently decided to keep from me.

But then I looked at you, how relaxed you seemed, almost eerily serene, and the emotions were gone as quickly as they came.

“I'm sorry I disappointed you,” you told me quietly.

The knot inside me loosened a little. “You could stop now.”

“Oh, Roo.” Your voice sounded so regretful yet gentle, as though saying this hurt you, Sam. “But I can't, can I?”

“Why not?”

“Because I like the peace. It calms me down even though it never lasts.” Almost like an afterthought you added, “Nothing ever does, though, not for me.”

I wanted to get angry. I wanted to shout at you, _What about me? Am I not always there? Aren't I enough?_ Because the way you talked made it seem as though you were so deep inside your loneliness that it clouded you from seeing me. Me, Sam, your best friend, your boyfriend, your family, and once, years ago, you'd called me your home. Was I not enough? What was it that you needed but you didn't have? Couldn't you just ask me for it? Thinking of it now, it was probably cocky of me, to be saying that I could drive your demons away when I couldn't even drive away mine. And anyway, that was you, and the Sam I knew never asked for anything from somebody else in his life because he was too proud.

But I didn't say any of those. The next nights, when you haven't come home to my place, I would immediately look for you under that mango tree. I would sit beside you with my legs crossed. You would hand me a cigarette or two in silence and we would watch the dark night sky for hours.

Some nights, you'd ask me if I'd thought death was easy.

I'd say yes.

I'd ask what you thought, but you would never answer.

*

**Monday, August 8 th, 2005**

I rounded up to you when we were going home together later. “Why?”

You frowned at me. “Why what?” There was a bust at the corner of your lip. I tried to touch it, but you moved away and averted your eyes.

“Why were you fighting?”

“No reason.”

“Don't bullshit me, Sam,” I snapped, but you already started pedaling your bike so I had to pick up mine. “Stop stalling.”

You sighed. There was a sense of defeat in your frame, as if you had seen the future and known what it would look like. I wonder if that's also how I looked like to you back then, Sam. Staring at you with my haunted eyes at the nights I was wrecked with my own horror. “It's stupid,” you finally replied. “They're asking for a fight. Calling us queers and shit.”

“And that's different from the other days, how?” This wasn't something new. At the start of that year, people had started a rumor that we were dating each other, which wasn't wrong in the least, but no one but Penny knew that and I knew Penny wouldn't say that kind of thing. By then, we'd been together for two years, even though it really didn't feel all too different from how we were before, only with kissing.

“Well, for one, this guy said that you must have been—” I watched you gritting your teeth, "—the bitch in the relationship." The words were spat with so much venom that I could feel your hatred toward them.

It was a little bit funny because of how ironic it was. I remember at that point we'd never gone past mutual hand jobs. Once or twice over the past months perhaps, and even when we did, it was obvious to me what you'd wanted. I didn't have preferences as I had never been interested to try this kind of things before you, but I found myself being the dominant one when we were in bed.

Even so, not in a million years I would use that kind of insult to anyone else, straight or gay relationships aside, because it was just derogatory way people did to hurt other people just so they'd rise above them. It was making me sick.

“Most people are mean because they don't understand,” I told you softly, soothingly. “And because they don't understand, they're scared. I won't say that's not a shitty fucking thing to say, Sam, it's rude as all hell, but I'd rather focus on other people.” I shrugged. “You know, the many other kids who don't care about the rumors. It's almost July, Sam. It's already an old news.”

You didn't say anything. I should have noticed then something was wrong.

“So, did the teacher call you to their office?” I asked carefully, parking my bike beside the porch steps.

It took you a long time to answer, at least not until we were sitting on our couch, watching the television. “Yeah.”

“What did they say?” You were so quiet, I had to ask again, “Sam?”

“Nothing much. Just that I would be expelled if I fought again. I mean, my class absences and bad grades had already pissed them off. I skipped the classes a lot.” You shrugged nonchalantly as if that wasn't at all news to me. “They won't, though. Expel me, I mean. But I might not pass the grade.”

“Sam.”

“I didn't tell you exactly because of this reason. Because then you'll worry your head off.”

“Of course, I will, you dumbass!” I hissed. “You're skipping classes? What the fuck?”

“Yeah. So, don't worry about it. They're never going to expel me. My father had made sure of it the beginning of our school year.”

I didn't like the sound of it. Your tone was so flat. “What does that mean?”

Finally, finally, you looked back at me, then with a wince of pain you looked away. There was a flash of shame there and I found myself wanting to hold you, but it was gone as quickly as it came. “It means he'd 'donated' a lot of money before he left to make sure I finish high school. And I mean, a lot.”

Then, I heard it. The thing you didn't say. “He's not coming back, is he?”

Your smile was a mix of anger, tinted with sadness that threatened to leak. It was an eye-opening moment, because even though all I could feel was relief, I can still remember how you'd looked like that day. The obvious longing in your face. The crippling devastation. I recalled then the reason you'd wanted to stay at all. _I've got to fix it_ , you'd said. _They used to laugh a lot, Roo. I've got to fix that_.

I watched the way you curled your left hand, then opened it again, over and over as if you wanted to remind yourself it was still there. It was something you did often then, right after you'd started attending the therapy. I realized then that was why you'd agreed to live in my house in the first place, not only because Luce had begged you to, but because you'd known. That was why some days you'd sit under the mango tree drinking because that must have been your way to mourn, because you'd known.

I was breathless, as if there wasn't enough air. I wondered if that was how it felt like to be you, Sam. Living, but never quite breathing. How does anyone ever manage to live that way?

“You were right, Roo. There's nothing to fix.” Then you scoffed because of how funny it was. I wondered if you'd been blaming yourself. You must have. Because if you hadn't been so stubborn from the start, if you'd just listened to me then, if you'd just left that house, you wouldn't have been here, with your left arm ruined, with a father who was too much of a coward to see what he'd done to his own son.

And because I knew that was what you were thinking, I held you tightly in my arms. You stiffened before melting into me and I felt as you breathed me in. How soft it was. How soft you were. I said to you, “We're going to make it, Sam. I swear to you.”

But I didn't know if you believed me. I didn't know if I even believed my own words.

*

**Tuesday, August 9 th, 2005**

The next fight started not even an hour into the first class subject. The hallways were noisy and many of them chanted your name like you were the little golden god in my earliest memory.

There were three boys around you, speaking loudly about how disgusting you were and then there were flashes of fists and legs. Drops of blood on the white floor. Somebody else screaming for the crowd to disperse. And me, I was standing in the front right after I'd heard the yelling, wondering why I was just watching instead of telling you to stop. Because _stop this, Sam, stop before it's too late. Stop destroying yourself. Stop thinking you deserved it._

But I couldn't. I stood there unmoving even as the crowd moved away and a teacher came chewing you out. You looked around and your eyes found mine. You held me where I stood and you might not know this, Sam, but I would always entranced by you.

“ _Samson Brown_!” the teacher yelled. “Now you listen to me, kid, pulling one more stunt like this—“

I didn't hear the rest because I walked away.

*

 **Tuesday, August 9 th, 2005** _  
_ _Evening_

Later, in the evening, I was sitting on the steps of my back porch, watching the sun came down when you opened the back door and sat beside me quietly. The sky was orange, red around the edges like it was bleeding. I'd known for a long time that you loved sunsets more than sunrises like you loved the endings in movies more than the beginnings while I loved everything in between. So we sat there in silence we were so familiar with, waiting for the day to end.

“You can't keep doing that,” I murmured to you when the sky was dark. Your head was leaning onto my shoulder the way you did sometimes when it was just the two of us. I missed that, Sam. I still do. I remember the smell of your shampoo and the soft strands of your hair. I remember the way it glinted under the sun.

“It's like we're a pair of lone wolves.”

“Are you even listening to me, Sam?”

“Have you ever thought about it, Roo? We've always loved silence a little bit too much. Maybe it's not so healthy, huh?” You pulled back and looked up to me then. Your expression was so vulnerable, so bare when you were with me. I found myself wishing so desperately someone else would see you this way, see you the way I always did, this side of you that you'd never allowed other people to see because you thought of it as a weakness to exploit. I wondered when that happened. When it was that you learned to completely block people out of your life when you'd never done that to me, not once.

“It's not a good enough reason to drive people away,” I replied softly.

“But it's a reason.”

“You can fight.” It was a question veiled as a statement. I didn't notice it before in the first fight because I came out late and I was too surprised to process it.

“Of course,” you replied dryly. “When you live with someone with temper as explosive as my father, you would, too, if just for self-defense. I’m usually good at it, except for that one time.”

Your honesty struck me speechless. You'd never been so open talking about your family. “Then why didn't you ever—”

“What? Hit him back? Roo, he's my father.”

“How could you ever stand it then?” I heard my voice rising. My blood was rushing in my ears and my pain came anew each time I recalled the time he'd stomped on you. I remembered the time he'd choked you over the railing and suddenly it was so hard to breathe. I wondered if this was what it felt like to be choked. “How could you stand all the blows and the painful words, coming back home to that every day? Do you think I didn't notice how exhausted you were on some days? How could you ever love them at all, Sam? Because I hate them. I hate them so much.”

With a weary sigh, you told me, “I can't help it, Roo. They're all I have.” Then came your cynical smile, one that was hard for me to recognize as yours. “It doesn't matter anymore though. He's gone now. And soon my mother. Then there will be no one else left.”

I blinked away the blur in my eyes. “What about me then?”

You wrapped your arm around my shoulders and rested your temple on top of my head. “Silly Roo. You're always my home.”

“I want to hurt them, Sam.” I felt the tremble in my voice. How I shook. There was something building and blazing inside me and it took me a while to realize that it was rage. I didn't know what to do with it, so I tried to push it back down. “Because all they do is hurt you.”

But you knew. Of course, you knew. “Oh, Roo, but you can never do that, can't you? You know why? Because you're the best person I've ever met. The most loyal, the kindest. It's not in you to hurt people. It's my job because I'm supposed to be the violent one. It's what I do.”

When the moon was full and fat in the sky, I pulled you up from your seat to guide you back inside. You were giving me that soft smile, one you had only for me. I kissed the palm of your hand when you reached out to slide back a lock of my hair behind my ear. I asked you, “Have I ever told you how much I love you?”

Your blinding grin was everything I wanted to live for.

“Tell me again.”

*

**Saturday, September 10 th, 2005**

At first everything was okay.

You started going into classes again because I insisted you to. There was a small argument in my kitchen later on and I could see the fight had left you hollow. You still touched your violin like it was the pieces of your shattered heart. You still went into the therapy. But you didn't want to go to classes. I could see it in your eyes.

“Sam.”

“I just think it's useless, Roo,” you sighed. Exasperation colored your tone. “I mean, I can't concentrate, you know? And what's the point? All I ever wanted was to play violin.”

I should have seen it then. The first sign. But I didn't. “But, Sam, you'll still need to graduate.”

“Why? It's not like I need it.”

“Maybe not you, but I do.” I touched your hand with mine on top of the kitchen table. You had been warm, unlike how cold you were in that sterile hospital room months ago. Deathly pale with your eyes closed. They'd stitched back your mouth then. You looked as if you were sleeping. “Sam, don't you want to go to the same university as I do?”

I could tell my words had thrown you, though I didn't fully understand why. I always used to assume that we'd go together no matter what we did. I assumed that university was in the cards. “You know I want to be with you, Roo.”

“Then you'll need to graduate so we can go together. All right?”

I watched as you thawed. That was something I knew. I knew you'd listen to me because you always did and maybe it made me a bit arrogant because I always thought you would do what I asked. I was special to you. I knew I was, because you were special to me too. So, it didn't surprise me when you finally relented, “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah. I'll try.”

And I grinned until you smiled at me back.

*

**Sunday, October 19 th, 2005**

And at first everything was okay.

Until it wasn't. I didn't know where it went wrong.

Around a week before your sixteenth birthday, you'd been gone from the world for days. It didn't happen all at once. It was subtle, the signs, that I didn't really notice it.

At first you just stopped coming to the therapy. You said adamantly that you could use your left arm just fine even though I saw the way it still shook and how you dropped the things you'd been carrying in your left hand sometimes.

“Roo, for the last time, I'm fine.”

“But the therapist thinks—”

“Well, he doesn't know what he's thinking! I keep telling him and you. It's okay now.”

I let you get away with it. Perhaps because I thought you'd never lie about this. I don't know why I'd thought you'd never lie because you'd lied a lot, especially the last two years you'd been alive, even to me. I wonder sometimes if it was like what my therapist had said, that I'd blocked it all out because it was hard on me to process the fact that I am a work in progress. I could be having these sessions for the rest of my life just so I could function daily and I'm never going to fully recover.

I insisted that you told me right away when your left arm was bothering you again and you said of course and I believed you. Why did I ever believe you?

Maybe the reason why I'd been so ready to placate you was because of the guilt I'd secretly carried. The guilt that perhaps if I'd just reported your father's abuse when we'd been twelve and you'd been lying in that hospital bed. If I'd just disregarded my promise and told it to someone, you wouldn't have been in this situation. Maybe we wouldn't have been friends anymore but you'd have had your violin and it'd have been okay.

As long as you were happy, Sam. It was all I cared about.

But it hadn't happened and this was the reality so I told you, okay. Because I didn't know why I didn't notice it until it was too late. Maybe I was too always too stressed, too preoccupied with something else, but it had been weeks since the last time you opened your violin case and touched it at night before we went to sleep.

It didn't happen all at once, but even though you came into classes and your grades were getting better, you would be gone for the rest of the day. I didn't know where you were going. When I asked you, all you said was you needed time alone to think, which on hindsight I should have protested about, Sam. Hadn't you had enough time to be drowning in your thoughts already? Wasn't it the problem? That you had too much time not playing violin?

But every late evening, or sometimes during the dusk, you never failed to come home to me and we would be eating dinner and watching movies. Laughing and commenting about how stupid the plot was. Or we could be browsing silly videos online and I'd kiss you on the lips because I liked your smile and I liked how you were with me so I thought, okay. You needed time alone so I would give that to you and it was okay because before we slept I would remind you again that I believed everything would get better if we would just keep walking ahead. It was okay. Some nights you would smile and shift your head into where my neck and shoulder met and I would hold you until you fell asleep.

Some others you would stare at nothing and ask something like, “Do you really believe that, Roo?”

“Yeah, I do.” I had to, didn't I? I refused to believe that that was all the situation could ever be.

And you would be quiet, alone with your thoughts. Sometimes I fell asleep waiting on you. Sometimes I would hear you say, “I believe you.” before your breath evened out and you fell asleep.

The fights never stopped, no matter what I said to you in private. There was always something to fight about. Sometimes it was over something stupid, like how ratty your shoes were, but you fought anyway. At some point, I was certain that you fought just to let out the aggression which didn't seem to know where to go. I realized that before that you still had your violin to calm you down. With violin out of the equation, what did you have left?

Your temper became more and more explosive each day that people at school started to distance themselves from you. Some days I would see you and there was a glimpse of your father in the taut shape of your jaw and the dangerous glint in your eyes that it scared me, Sam. I didn't know why it did, because you would never hurt me, but it did. Maybe I was scared for you, not of you.

“It doesn't make any difference,” you said to me when I'd pointed it out one night. "It's not like I have many friends. I'm not you, Roo. I'm not—the easiest person to hang out with.”

“But the few friends you have are worried about you.” I couldn't mention Penny as one of them. After the kissing incident years before, you guys never really made up even though sometimes both of you asked me how each other was doing since I still hanged out with her at school. When I asked you why you wouldn't just talk to her yourself, you just winced and said, “I know you mean well, but not a good idea, Roo.”

“Since when do I even have friends?”

“Sam.”

“But whatever. They shouldn't. I'm doing just fine on my own.”

“Sam.”

You pushed away your dinner plate. Your expression was uncharacteristically blank, the way it did more and more often those last few months. “Roo, just. It's nothing. I need time, okay? Give me time.”

I nodded reluctantly. I would give anything to you, Sam. Anything.

But around a week before your sixteenth birthday, you'd been gone from the world for days. You didn't come to school, you didn't come to me, and you hadn't been home for days. I tried looking for you everywhere, the places we'd been to and the places we used to play at. I came asking to Damian, Penny, and then Bright Night, even though I knew it was highly unlikely. They offered to look for you and I let them, but I knew they wouldn't find you because if I couldn't, how could anyone?

Somehow I kept hearing stories in my minds about how cats left their homes when they were dying, looking for a peaceful place to die. My heart would race as I pedaled harder around the neighborhood, then around the town because what if you were a cat? What if you actually left me behind this time?

I felt a pang of pain at the thought that you didn't even leave me a note. Wasn't I at least worth a note? Thinking about it now, can you imagine how trivial that is, Sam? A fucking note. If you'd just leave a note I'd be okay. Now after eighteen and nine months later, when you left me with a suicide note tapped on my refrigerator and I wanted to take back my thought.What a stupid fucking thought. Why did I ever think it was okay? The fact that you had to leave at all hadn't been okay in the first place.

On the third morning you were gone, I brought it up to Luce, early in the morning before she went to work.

“What do you mean gone? Have you checked his house?”

“As in I couldn't find him anywhere and he hadn't been home. And no he’s not there either.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“Afternoon three days ago.”

I watched as Luce try to calm herself down. She didn't quite succeed. “And you only think to tell me now?”

“It's not the first time, okay?” I said to her a bit too quickly. I knew, I knew I was doing something wrong, but it was you, Sam. I could never say no to you, no matter how stupid the request was, and I hated myself for it. “He's gone sometimes, but he never leaves for more than a day. He said—he said he needed—needed—”

“Roo? Roo, sit down.” Suddenly she was right beside me, her hand on my shoulders and the other pushed up my chin so I could see her. Her concern was written all over her face. “Shit. Roo, calm down. See me? Follow my rhythm. Breathe like I do. Okay?” I mimicked the slow way she inhale and exhale her breath. After a while I was okay again and she put her forehead to mine as she closed her eyes, sighing in relief.

I don't think you knew this, or even the fact that I got panic attacks sometimes. It was rare back then, but since your death it had gotten much worse. The last one I had was—this morning actually, but I'd gotten a hang of it now, don't worry.

“What do I do, Luce?” I whispered. “Sam is—he's in pain. I can tell. He's in pain and I don't know how to help.”

“Oh Roo,” she said regretfully, not unlike how you sounded sometimes, “Sam might be in pain, and I hurt for him, I swear I do. He's like my little brother, too. But we can't help people who don't want to be helped.”

Abruptly, I was defensive. “Is that what you think? That he doesn't want to be helped?”

“Roo, he's running away.”

“Not away. He's just gone for a while. He does that sometimes. We all do.”

“But he's not dealing with his issues,” Luce said to me. I hated how kind she sounded, how patient she looked. Sometimes she looked at me as though I was a lost kid instead of her sixteen-year-old brother. It made me bristle. “Tell me, when was the last time he had his therapy?”

When I didn't answer, she added, “Did he go to school okay? Not skipping classes? Not fighting?”

I blinked at her. "How did you know about the fights?"

Her small laugh sounded like she was surprised, like she thought I was joking, but she stopped when she saw how bewildered I must have looked. How confused. Her tone was careful when she said, “Roo, you do know that Sam has a temper, right?”

“He does, but that doesn't mean he fights!”

Her expression was sad. Always, always Luce saw something more much longer than I did, especially when it was about myself, especially when it was about you. “Because being with you mellowed him. You had that effect on people, don't you know? That and he had his violin.”

“Has.”

“What?”

“He still has it. It's not in past tense.”

She only looked sadder. At that moment, I hated her. Hated that she looked like I was a naïve child that I probably had been. “Roo, it's not—you must have known—just think. Why do you think he stopped going into the physical therapy?”

“Because he's okay now.”

“You must know that's not true. Even I know his hand still shakes when tries to grab something and I only see him on weekends.”

“But he said—”

“You can't believe everything he said, Roo.” She raised her hand to stop my protest. “Now I know, I know he rarely ever lied to you, but that was before— _Before_.”

“What are you implying?”

“I'm not implying. I'm telling you a fact, you idiot,” she snapped. “He hasn't been stable for years. He's an emotional wreck and I know this because I used to be one after Mom died. And don't say I didn't seem that way, because I wasn't when I was at home, Roo. Because I had you, okay? You grounded me, like you grounded Sam.”

I was silent for what seemed to be hours, but she waited patiently until I processed what she was saying. At some point she decided to call work for a day off, to school to tell them I had a flu, and helped me look for you—to no avail.

Luce offered to report a missing person to the police, but I immediately shot it down. I was certain you'd come back home, I just didn't when you would and it killed me not to know. She just gave me a grim nod and put her arm around my shoulders the whole way back home. The weight was reassuring when nothing else was.

At the end of the day, we sat down in front of the television. The conversation was low, almost muted, and I pictured having you sitting beside me on the couch, telling me to change the channel because that movie sucked and you had better things to waste time with, how you'd laugh when I threw pillow at you.

“Lucy.”

“Yeah?”

“If I kept him grounded before, why is he leaving me now?”

The way she sighed was so very tired, like she didn't want to tell me, so she didn't say anything. I knew what it meant, even if she didn't tell me, even if you didn't tell me, Sam. It was because I wasn't quite enough to ground you anymore.

*

**Friday, October 28 th, 2005**

In the late evening, two days after your birthday, you came back home with your body soaking wet from head to toe. Your blond hair was almost dark brown, plastered onto your scalp. Behind you was the storm that had been going on all day, with its lightning and violent wind.

I ushered you quickly inside, not saying anything as I gave you a thick towel and used the other one in my hand to dry your head. I wasn't looking straight to your eyes. In fact, I looked everywhere except your eyes, but I could feel your hard stare. You looked at me as if pleading for me to look at you back, but I wouldn't, or couldn't—I don't think there's a difference.

I walked inside the shower cubicle with you. I stripped you down until you were bare and naked in front of me like I wished you would your soul, but you still weren't saying anything so I kept my mouth shut. Perhaps you were waiting for me to say something, but I didn't know what you'd want me to say. Anything I could say was bound to make me regret it later. Instead of talking, I turned on the warm spray and waited until you stopped shivering, then started soaping you up.

You seemed clean, so I would think you hadn't been sleeping on the street the past eleven days. Maybe you had somewhere to crash, which I told myself good. I told myself that over and over, but the relief never came.

When I was about to soap your lower body, I realized you were hard, so I stopped my movement for a bit and stared. It must have been a while since you last paid it any attention, or maybe it was just the sight of me, dripping wet with my full clothes on under the shower that did it for you.

After we passed the embarrassment of fumbling stupidly around each other's erections for the first time many months ago, gone was the shy boy I'd known for seven years. You'd been vocal about how much you'd found me attractive; with my jet black hair and the palest blue shade of my eyes; with my wide shoulders and strong arms despite my shorter height and slightly smaller built. We were both slowly filling up our frame over the years and you were getting more confident in speaking up what you were thinking of me or what you wanted us to try.

A few days before you were gone, our time together had seemed almost frantic. The way you'd kissed me was rough and almost painful, but I'd never minded it much. I'd liked it, in fact, just not the way you'd looked at me then, as though you wanted something from me so desperately and yet you couldn't ask for it. I hadn't known what it was back then, but I knew now. You needed me to keep you grounded but you had no idea how.

I thought maybe I heard you whisper, “ _Roo_.” It was so soft it could be my imagination, but it got me back on moving the soap all over until it was done and I grabbed you so you would stand just under the spray. I still wouldn't look at you even as you called me again, louder this time, as if to make me sure that it was not just in my head. Instead, I watched the water beads rolled down your collarbone, your chest, your stomach, then finally your thigh. I had exactly one second before I made up my mind, knelt, and took you into my mouth.

The way you hissed and stepped back to the tiled bathroom wall just encouraged me further. I'd never done it, but it wasn't like I didn't know the technicalities. I'd watched a lot of porn so I'd know what I should be doing when I brought it up to you later on—or at least that was what I had been thinking before you were gone.

I wasn't very good at it, I might have gagged when you thrust too hard and coughed. My way of doing it might be a little bit too clinical, but the way you groaned and moaned my name told me it was good enough for the first time. Or maybe it was just that I had an element of surprise. It didn't really matter to me then. When you grabbed my hair tighter, your breath hitching, I knew what you meant, so I pulled back and stroke you until you came almost violently all over my chin and neck.

The way you looked then, Sam, I couldn't explain it. You looked sated and probably the most relaxed you had been in a long time, yeah, but you were completely still, as if the restless energy you had had before finally disappeared. There was adoration in your eyes, something like awe colored your whole face as you ran your shaking thumb over the corner of my lips, and I couldn't have that. I couldn't look a second longer at you with the anger that kept bubbling inside of me, threatening to come out, so I stood up, pulling off my T-shirt and the rest of my clothes to clean up my face and neck under the spray, then left you alone in the bathroom without saying anything.

When you came out from the bathroom, rummaging the drawer for clean clothes, I was already in bed, facing the wall at the opposite of the bathroom. I could hear the rustling sound of your clothes. You liked wearing pajamas when you slept while I always settled with plain T-shirt and boxers. I think it was something your parents used to make you do when you had been younger and they'd been happier, something they'd done before the three of you had moved here, a memory you clung onto.

I felt the bed move as you lay down beside me, probably facing the ceiling, and I felt your sigh as much as I heard it. The storm was still going hard outside the window. I had already called Luce earlier to find a place to stay near her workplace because of the storm. She had been worried, but finally relented. It wasn't like I would suddenly run out of the house to God knew where without any words.

Slowly, carefully, as if you were afraid I would brush you off, you slid your arm around my stomach. I could feel your soft exhale at the back of my neck and then your lips, brief and gentle, like being able to be with me brought you peace the way you'd told me once before. I wondered if it was still true, if I still brought you peace like I used to. Then I thought of you running away without a single word and I knew it to be false. I hated how painful it was, to know that you were not enough.

“Roo,” you whispered brokenly. “Say something. Why won't you say something?”

I was silent for a minute or two, staring at nothing, then, “What do you want me to say?”

“I don't know.” Frustration colored your voice and I wanted to wince. I wanted to pull myself away from you, but I lay there unmoving, not doing anything. “I don't know. Just—anything. How you've been. The movies you watched lately. School. If you're okay.” You pulled me closer, your nose on the side of my neck, your heart thundering on my back, before you added softly, “If you want me home.”

I was cold. “Haven't you made that choice already?”

You pulled at my shoulders until I faced you, but I wouldn't look back at you even as you pushed up my chin. I wondered how it was possible to feel both cold and hot at the same time because that was exactly what I felt. My hands were fists in front of my chest, knuckles white from how tight I curled them, but you gently opened my hands and caress my palm, as if trying to soothe me, as if it would work when you were the cause in the first place.

“You're angry,” you stated. When I didn't say anything, you pleaded, “Yell at me or something, Roo. Scream. Punch me. Whatever. Just don't be silent like this, like I'm not here, like—”

I gritted my teeth. “The last time I felt this worthless was when I was seven, two weeks after my mother's funeral, and my father was in the front door with his luggage, telling Luce to take care of me well then left without looking back. He came home only after more than a year had passed. No calls, no words, no anything. Just a bunch of fucking postcards from places he'd been.” I scoffed in disgust. “Luce was fifteen. _Fifteen_. And each time I'd asked her when Dad and Mom would come back, she'd cried. Only then I figured out he's not coming back, none of them would. Mom because she's dead and Dad left us behind just because he couldn't deal.”

There was a sharp inhale, then, “I didn't know.” Exhale. “Roo, I didn't know. You've never told me this before, not like this.”

It hurt when I laughed, Sam. It hurt to be with you at all sometimes. “Of course, you don't. All you care about is yourself.” I pulled back, lying on my back, staring at the ceiling. I could feel your pain rolling off you in waves, but for the first time in all the years we'd been together, I was exhausted. I was tired of trying, tired of giving my best support to you because I knew just how awful the things you'd been through. I had my own issues and I set it all aside so I could help you deal with yours, but then you left me behind like nothing mattered and where did that leave us?

“Roo.” The way you called me sounded like a plea, so I closed my eyes. “Roo, I'm so sorry.”

“What for?”

“For leaving. For not saying anything. I just—I needed to go—and it wasn't fair to you. Roo, would you please look at me?”

But I wouldn't. Behind my eyelids was a picture of my father with a small smile on his face, ruffling my hair, telling me that I was such a good boy, as if he was staying longer like he'd promised me to. The months of the next few years where he would come home, detached in his grief, completely oblivious that his son disliked the color green and brought back a green T-shirt from wherever he'd been anyway.

Then, you, Sam. How you'd looked like the few days before you left, that you must have thought of leaving even as you saw me smiling at you. So, I wouldn't, Sam. I wouldn't look at you because I couldn't stand it. I was tired of seeing the backs of the people who left me behind like I was nothing but a dirt.

I felt your nose, then your lips on my shoulder. Your gentleness made me feel sick, so I asked you, “Remember what you said a few months back?”

“Which one?”

“You said you just needed time, so I gave you one. Think you could give me that?” You didn't say anything so I opened my eyes and finally looked at you. You were staring at me with pain stark in your features, your eyes shining with unshed tears, but I was numb and all I could feel was anger. “So?”

“Yeah.” Your voice was rough. The word was caught a bit at the end.

“Can you?”

“Yeah. Anything you want, Roo.”

“Good.” I stared back at the ceiling and closed my eyes. I heard how hard you were breathing, as if no air would ever be enough, but you said nothing else. “I have school tomorrow morning. Good night, Sam.” Disappointment wrecked me when I didn't hear your reply, but I pushed it down until I felt only blissful hollowness and I convinced myself it was what I wanted.

On the verge of my dream, I felt the press of your lips on the corner of my lips. Maybe, maybe I heard you whisper softly, saying, “I love you, Roo.” But I pushed it away, because my nightmare was coming and it was the only one constant thing that I had now that you were no longer one.

*

**Saturday, October 29 th, 2005**

I was already awake inside the kitchen at 4 am, preparing breakfast even though it was usually Luce's turn. I hadn't said anything when I'd crept out of my bed earlier, woken and wrecked by heat and the taste of ash in my mouth from fire which wasn't there. You followed me not more than a few seconds later, blinking drowsily as you looked for me.

“Go back to bed,” I told you without looking back. You didn't say anything, but I heard the familiar creak of the kitchen table and I knew you'd be sitting there. I didn't know why you'd do that. Maybe you were frightened I would be gone in the middle of the night, leaving nothing behind, like I wasn't real at all.

When Luce came out from her room later, already clean with her work clothes, she faltered only a second on her step before pulling you into her arms, telling you that you were such an idiot and you should have at least left a note. From the corner of my eyes, I saw your nod, but you weren't looking at her, you were looking at me.

After breakfast, before Luce got into her car, I followed her out. I knew you were still in the bathroom. She gave me a look and said, “I know what you're doing, Rumon.”

It didn't faze me in the least. “And what am I doing?”

“You're doing the same exact thing you did when Dad had come for the first time.”

“Ah. That makes sense.”

She scoffed. “Stop doing that, okay? It doesn't fix anything. Talk to him or something. He comes back because he needs us, Roo, he needs you.”

I felt the churning of my anger. “But what about what I need?”

There was sadness in her eyes. Gently, she cupped my face. We were the same height then and I felt the oddness of knowing that I grew while she stayed the same. She said to me, “I know, but that's why I said you need to talk to him. Being quiet doesn't fix anything. Tell him what you need.”

I gritted my teeth. I missed you, God knew I did, but it hurt to look at you at all. Perhaps on those days you'd been gone, my mind had forced itself to set aside my emotions so I could survive living day by day. Then you came back and it didn't know what to do with it. “I'll think about it.”

“Think fast.” After a tap on my cheek and a small smile, Luce drove away, making me think that people would make effort to stay if they loved you enough.

I walked back into the house.

*

**Monday, October 31 st, 2005**

You were called into the teacher's office. I heard your name in the intercom. Worry started to bubble inside me, but I set it aside, going back to reading the material I'd be studying that day.

Later, when you sat next to me at the cafeteria during a break, you said, “I wasn't expelled.”

“Hm?” On the table was a book I'd been reading for days. Usually when we were together we'd be sitting on the school yard outside the cafeteria, on the same spot under the same tree, but last night's storm had made everything wet. And besides, I hadn't been sitting there in days, not after you left, so I sat on one of the tables. You didn't even ask anything. You just followed along.

“My absences are too many so I have to like, take extra classes, but I think I'm going to pass. I'll also continue the physical therapy.”

“Oh. That's good.” I uncapped my bottle of juice and gulped it once.

The silence was suffocating because you were staring at me the whole time. Finally, after long minutes, you exhaled the breath you'd been holding, whispering, “Right. Okay.”

A rowdy bunch of guys passed our table. Seeing you sitting right in front of me one of them sneered, “Hey, if it isn't the cocksucker. Back into the business now, I see.” The rest of them laughed, but slowly stopped when they realized neither of us reacted to the taunt. I saw your hand turned into fist on the table, but that was all. The group finally left not a second later, murmuring about what your problem was.

You weren't fighting anymore and I told myself, _that's good, that's good, that's good_. I gulped down the rest of my juice then stood from my seat. You followed me along. I thought, _that's good you're not fighting anymore that's good_. I threw the empty bottle away in the bin near the exit door of the cafeteria. I noticed then my hands were shaking and my breath unsteady. I recognized the signs but I couldn't understand why I would get them at all.

When I walked to the direction of the restroom to throw up, I knew you'd follow so I told you, “Don't, Sam.” I looked up to you, seeing the hurt, taking it along with mine. “I'll meet you after class, okay?” I waited until you nodded, then ran into one of the restroom stalls, vomiting everything inside my stomach until the bell rang.

*

**Friday, November 4 th, 2005**

It didn't get better.

Maybe you remember this, Sam. It's the few months I'd constantly get sick, which was weird since I rarely ever got sick, I know. You'd stayed away at first, but maybe at some point you decided not to give a fuck about my request for more time and space because the next thing I knew when I was sleeping off my fever, you were sitting right beside my bed with a cold towel in your hand. I felt the softness of your hand, how blissfully cold it was, then fell into fitful sleep.

My nightmares wrecked me. I was awake more often than not and so when I couldn't even stand to go to school, I saw it in your face that you wanted to stay, but I reminded you of your absences and your extra classes until finally you left, but not before making sure I had everything I needed right beside the bed.

“Roo, maybe you should go see a doctor,” you suggested on the third night of my fever.

I replied with a curt, “No.”

“But you're not getting better. I've called Luce and she thinks so, too.”

“No. I don't need doctors or hospitals.” Because I hated it. I hated it even more because of the times I would sit in there waiting for you to be healthy enough to get out. I kept recalling the time when my mother lay motionless in the hospital bed and I felt sick.

Your sigh was exasperated, filled with frustration. “Roo, don't be difficult.”

“I SAID NO!” I yelled, surprising you, surprising myself. “If you think of me as being difficult, then you can just fucking leave! Isn't that what you do anyway? Leaving when it gets hard?”

The moment the words came out, I laughed, because of how much I hated myself. I saw the shock on your face, before slowly the blank mask came down. You finally blocked me away and that should earn me a laugh, didn't it? I put my head into my hands and laughed until I sobbed, softly at first, but quickly it turned into a violent whacking sobs.

You didn't leave until later, when you thought I was asleep and I imagined that was it, that was probably going to be the last time I saw you, with the careful blank mask that I knew well because I wore it all the time.

I fell asleep thinking of forest fire and blood.

*

**Saturday, November 5 th, 2005**

There were glimpses. Voices came and went. At some point someone put something round on top of my chest, opened my eye, opened my mouth. Conversations in low voices woke me up a little and I saw you standing in my room facing someone dressed in white. Your face was grim as you shook your head or nodded.

Maybe you felt the weight of my stare because soon you glanced at me and sat back beside me. I heard a voice say something about rest, higher fever, taking a shot and medicine to be picked up. You didn't say anything except, “Yeah.” It took me a while to notice the voice was gone and so was the man in white.

“I didn't know you were friends with doctors,” I slurred. I didn't know how much of it was comprehensible, but you smiled a little.

“What—you think I put those casts by myself, Roo?” You laced your fingers around mine. “I'm good at doing things by myself, but I don't think I'm that good.”

I knew what you were trying to say, so I replied, “It's not good to be alone all the time.”

Before falling back asleep, I heard you saying softly, “No, it's not.” And for the first time in days I fell into a dreamless sleep.

*

**Thursday, November 10 th, 2005**

I remember a lot of things from when we were sixteen. Happy things.

The late birthday cake I'd bought you two weeks after your birthday. It had been navy blue from the candles to the icing and the cream. You had laughed loud and long, until a tear escaped from a corner of your eyes and you shook your head, looking at me with wonder in your eyes. You'd pulled me in later, kissing me roughly on the lips as though you were trying to maul me and I drank the taste of vanilla on your tongue as if I were thirsty.

On my bed with our clothes off, you'd pushed at my shoulders, asking, “Wait, do you—”

“Condom and lube? I have them.”

That shocked another laughed out of you. You sounded breathless. “Shouldn't have asked. You're always prepared.”

“It's just an 'in case' thing. I've had them since months ago.”

“Yeah?” Your smile was amused as you ran your fingers down my arm.

I smiled back. “Yeah.”

You were quiet for a while, before finally you asked, “Do you think we could...?”

“Only if you want to.”

“Roo.” I watched the way your Adam’s apple bobbed as you swallowed down your nerves. Fair skin flushed pink every time you were with me and I felt a fierce but foreign sense of possessiveness that no one else would get to see you that way, laid bare underneath me, vulnerable, naked, content, gorgeous, and wonderful. “I've wanted to for a long time. I just didn't know how...to bring it up.”

You hissed when I touched you and I tried to hide a smirk at the side of your neck as I kissed it. “You're up enough for me.”

I never told you how much I loved your laughter. How crisp it was. Your gentleness that was only meant for me when you said, “Ass. I also want to return the favor for the thing in the shower.” And I found it sweet the way you'd call a blowjob as a thing because I knew it embarrassed you. It only showed to me how innocent you were underneath all the hardness. When you grabbed me closer, there was no more conversation to be had.

There were hands all over, mine on and in your body, yours on mine. My mouth on yours then your mouth on something of mine. Your groan and stifled moan were the most wonderful sound I had ever heard and I fleetingly wondered what it would feel like to have this for the rest of our lives. The thought dampened my mood for a second or two, at least until you said, “Stop thinking so hard.” then put your mouth on me again and I forgot completely how to create words.

The foreplay might have taken too long because at one point you smacked me at my side while panting hard as though we'd just been at a marathon and I had to bury my head on your shoulder to keep me from laughing. In the end I took what I needed, or maybe I gave you what you needed—I couldn't tell the difference. It was awkward at first because the angle didn't work somehow and maybe because we were laughing too much it was hard to really navigate, especially in the dark, but we finally did it with groans escaping from both of our mouths.

You'd tell me later when it was over that it was painful at first, but it had helped that I'd been an attentive partner, that I saw it that you got off first before I did. Patience was my virtue, you'd said with a knowing curl at the corner of your mouth, mirth glinting in your eyes, so I'd tickled you until your howled and wheezed and cried. I might have been patient, but I couldn't hold back more than ten thrusts in because of how intimate it had been, that you could love someone so much to want to be inside of them just so you'd see how they see the world.

I remember the week you'd bought me a ticket to watch a soccer game at the stadium next town over for the weekend and I gave you a confused look, “How are we going to get there, man? We only have our bikes and I'm not pedaling my ass there.”

“Roo.” You gave me a mock-offended sigh. “Give me some credit, huh? I asked Luce to lend us her car.”

“Yeah, so? We don't have driving license.” There was your shit-eating grin and I felt my eyes widened by the realization. “Holy shit! You _didn't_!”

I tackled you even before you finished taking out your license card, cackling the whole time. I ruffled your hair affectionately, until you screamed, “Roo, stop, I spent half an hour for that hair,” but we were laughing so much that it was hard to imagine we'd ever been anything but happy.

But there were also those times. I remember those times when we were walking around the neighborhood one evening despite the rain. You'd told me once that you loved the sound of the storm and rain licking the edges of your face. Your face was upturned to the sky, eyes closed, listening to the loud rumble of the thunders, your cigarette abandoned, wet and dying around your fingers. You opened your mouth and I imagined you screaming, screaming something I couldn't hear because of how loud the wind was. You looked as though you were wailing; a little lone wolf howling for a pack which was not there anymore.

Maybe there were tears there, too, hidden by drops and drops of water which never stopped falling and I recalled the day you'd finally come home to me, thinking maybe you'd been soaking wet that day because you'd done exactly the same thing you were doing then.

When you suddenly opened your eyes, your stare collided with mine and you gave me a gentle smile that made the corner of your eyes wrinkle. You walked back to me and kissed me briefly on the lips before we walked back into my house to shower and change, back to reality, back to where nothing could touch you.

“What did you say earlier?” I asked.

“When?”

“In the rain.”

“Oh. It was nothing.” I didn't push. Instead, I held you by the shoulders, my head leaned to the side of yours and we watched movie until we fell asleep.

The fights never stopped. Months passed and they happened still. I couldn't stop them. Some days you were so upset about everything I could practically feel the vibration of your anger. It was something which was difficult for me to understand because when you were with me you'd always been calm and relaxed, but it was when you were surrounded by other people that you'd change into a completely different person. You'd throw the first punch to whoever had insulted you, disregarding any caution of consequences that had been drilled into your ears over and over. You were fierce in the way you looked, as if the world alone angered you, as if not even you knew what to do with so much rage.

Some days being around people hurt you so much that you had to get away. You never pulled the whole vanishing act anymore, knowing what it would do to me, or at least until the last time when we were seventeen and you had a gun in your hand. You knew exactly how I felt about you leaving without words, so when you needed to go away you'd always tell me.

Not once you failed to come back home to me in the evening, with bloodied knuckles and bruised cheekbones and jaws. Sometimes you'd clean them on your own, sometimes I'd do it for you, then we would be sitting on the couch pretending everything was fine.

On the days when it was unbearable, I'd find you under that mango tree. We were almost seventeen, but at that point you had alienated yourself from everyone around you except those you'd hang around with at school who sold weeds and drugs when no one was looking. You were so angry your hands trembled, but you didn't know why. I told you that it was because you were sad. You clutched that bottle of vodka you stole from your father's stash tightly onto your chest as if you were trying to ease the tightness inside your chest. I asked you where it hurt, and you only said, “Everywhere.”

Maybe once when we were sitting in my living room, watching vacantly to the muted television, I'd told you, “I wish I could take it away.”

“Take what away?”

“Your pain.”

Your voice was wistful when you replied, “It's no one's fault, Roo. Sometimes pain is there to stay.”

But I wished it wouldn't. I wished it would go away. If I recalled the tragedy in your eyes, brimming with tears as you told me you were sorry, the explosive sound of the gun echoing inside your neglected house, the blood flying, the sharp smell of iron. I saw your eyes and I recognized it like an old friend because perhaps your pain mirrored with mine, so I wheezed and sobbed as I waited for the ambulance to come.

If there was salvation in death, I couldn't see it in your eyes.

*

**Saturday, August 12 th, 2006**

Your father came back to your house one day in August, when I'd already turned seventeen and your birthday was still a couple of months away. I felt the awfulness grew inside me, but you touched my hand and said, “It's going to be just fine. He just came to visit.”

I remembered how your mother spent her days being drunk or high and how every day you would come into that house just to take care of her. I replied, “I don't feel good about this, Sam. Your father wasn't exactly a good father in all the times I'd known him.”

“You've never seen Dad sober, Roo.”

“You're saying he's sober now?”

“Yeah.”

I shook my head. “It doesn't feel right.”

“But I've got to try,” you insisted. “You know I have to, Roo.”

I knew, of course, I knew. But I also knew you to become a different person when he was around, how you would beg just so he would accept you as his son as though to be one you had to be something much bigger than you already were. I knew you to be hurt by his words, that you would take his blows just so he would stay. Did that change over the years? Did anything change?

I could probably tell you many things. Reasons upon reasons why nothing would ever work between you and your family was because they asked you many things you could never give. Not because you were lacking, but because they never had the intention the meet you halfway through.

On the days that it hurt you think about them, about your unborn sibling, about your violin, about your left hand and the things you had lost, when you came to me with unshed tears in your eyes, whispering in-between kisses, “Hold me, Roo. Won't you hold me until it's gone?” I'd murmur to you how much I loved you, how precious and priceless you were to me, how you were worth the whole fucking world. So, I would tell you over and over again that even though I realized most of the time our sex were just an outlet to ease your pain or something to ground you, I would do it all over again.

But I looked at you in the eyes then and there was just so much hope inside them it hurt me to say anything else so I wouldn't mention it. I wouldn't tell you how hopeless it was. I'd keep it in me so it would never hurt you.

“You can't do that anymore,” I told you sternly.

“Do what?”

“Let him walk all over you. I won't let him, I won't let you let him do that.” I cupped your face in my hands and added, “You belong to me, remember?” And you smiled at me as though I'd just handed you the whole world.

I could tell it wasn't going well when I saw it was almost nine in the evening you were still not coming back. Your house right across was lit brighter than it had ever been in all the years it was occupied. I saw your shadow or your father like he was pacing. I didn't know what you talked about and to be completely honest, I couldn't imagine what it was like for you to talk with him at all. I never could understand your love for them, Sam. Many times I'd suspected it was just that you didn't understand what a normal affection between family members felt like. The worst part was I didn't even know if I could explain it to you what compassion should have looked like.

From the window, I could see you stomping outside. The front door slammed so violently the whole house shook. As you walked back to where I was standing on my front porch, I heard a loud crash coming out of your house's kitchen, followed by shouts of outrage and another fight between your parents.

Your face was grim when you reached me, holding me so tightly, inhaling my scent as if you would float away if you didn't remember it. Faintly, I could hear the yelling coming out of your house. Something about having a son who didn't know how to like a girl like any normal boy would and whose fault it was.

I held my breath. “You told them.”

“I did,” you replied flatly.

I clutched onto you tighter and whispered, “ _Sam_.”

“It's okay.”

I thought about broken bones, about unresolved rage, about sadness at the tip of your tongue, about desperation when you clung onto me. “How is that ever okay?”

“It doesn't matter. There's nothing we can do about it now.”

“But we could have—we could have stayed silent. I wouldn't object to that—”

“No,” you cut off. When you pulled back, I recognized you. My soft-hearted friend. “You're important to me, Roo, and I won't ever lie about that anymore. I'm not going to have it. If they're not going to take it then I'm leaving them for good.” Even though your smile was sad, I saw the resolution in it. Unfurling inside me was warmth I didn't know I could feel anymore.

If someone had told me that was how hope felt like—blinding, overwhelming, all-encompassing—I wouldn't have believed them.

Later that night, you would take your chance to be on top and I remember vividly the way you told me how gorgeous I was lying under you, pale eyes looked almost dark with desire, and how good it felt to be inside of me. I'd laughed under my breath, but immediately stopped with a gasp when you thrust deeper inside.

“Laughing when you're being fucked isn't good for my ego, Roo.” But you were smirking. It made you look much younger, Sam, like you were my kindest and most soft-hearted best friend again instead of the jaded teen.

“It's just, your dirty talk, man.”

“What of it?”

“Oh, I don't know. I've known you for too long, I think it doesn't work on me anymore.” But I gasped when you did it again.

“Like hell it doesn't.”

When you kissed me, Sam, it felt as if I was brought back to life. Lying there in my bed with you smiling down at me, I thought to myself what would ever be better than this? To have you in my arms. To wake up next to you again. To laugh at your jokes and to take our bicycles, pedaling around the town.

We were just a normal pair of teens, and I know, Sam, I know I shouldn't blame myself because not once you had ever blamed me, but on the days like today I'd remember running around, walking, laughing from one place to another. On my back yard, my front porch, sitting on its railing because we'd grown too much to be hanging on the beams anymore, climbing up and jumping down the mango tree you hated as much as you loved, the flamingo pond, the yellow willow park, the small library at the corner of Crossing End Street, swinging on the rusty swing set, the clearing in the north wood, the small lake at the end of it that we'd found one day when we were twelve.

Months after months passed, you were with me, always, and perhaps right then I understood your sadness when no one else was looking. You told me not to mind about it because you were happy when you were with me, but some days I'd find you touching your violin case, cleaning up all the dusts, and I wanted to scream at how unfair everything was. That you should have deserved everything good in the world. You, Sam, because you were everything to me.

When we were lying in my bed side by side, staring at the ceiling, chuckling under our breath, you touched my chin so I'd look at you and smile. You said, “Tell me again.”

And I told you, Sam, again and again.

*

One thing you must have known about hope, Sam, was probably how crushing it felt like when it was shattered into a million pieces.

*

**Thursday, February 1 st, 2007**

I imagined that time when you were sitting down on the lonely dock when we were seventeen, two months before your death, your legs swaying down into the clear water. How childlike you sometimes seemed to be. How when you smiled, the whole world ceased to be. When you looked down into the lake, your little smile was genuine, young and younger still, but then you had to look up and find me.

The emotions in your hazel eyes that day made them infinitely older. I thought to myself, I thought it over and over, what did they do to you? Or the other thought I could not stop from creeping between my hard edges, what did I do to you? I kept on recalling the easier days back when were little, you know? Before things got complicated, Sam, but I remembered the bruises in your pale skin when we used to jump into the lake and I knew right then things had never been simple for you at all—it was a privilege for someone like me.

You stood up from your seat, nodding and motioning me to follow you. You didn't look back because you knew I would. I'd follow you anywhere if you'd let me, but that was exactly the problem, wasn't it? You didn't want me to, and Sam, I got it. The place you'd go wasn't the place you'd want me to follow. I didn't know it then, but I know it now.

“You haven't been to school for four days,” I told you. It was a question, hiding cowardly as a statement. For weeks you'd been isolating yourself again. You were gone more often than not, and even though you came home to me, you'd never speak of where you'd been. I recalled the people you chose to spend time with at school or outside of it, how you'd drink in daylight and smoke like nothing mattered.

Something had changed in the last few months, or at least since a couple of weeks after your seventeenth birthday. There was something about your birthdays which seemed to wreck you. I didn't know what it was.

“I haven't.” You nodded. An unlit cigarette between your lips. My fingers itched to take it into my mouth.

“Why?”

“I don't see the point of it anymore, I guess. And anyway, I end up fighting more often than not.”

“We talked about this,” I insisted. “We could make your life better, but we need to graduate first. We'd work for it. I'd help you—”

“Roo, I know.” You looked back at me, then away. I should have seen it. I should have known what you meant right there. “And I thank you for that.”

But the stupid ignorant fool that I was asked you in bafflement, “I don't understand. It's less than a year away. You're just going to...drop it?”

You pulled out a lighter and lit your cigarette. You were quiet for a long time, but if I learned anything from the days I'd spent with you, Sam, it was how to flow with the silence, and then with the serenity that followed close behind. “I don't know, Roo, I'm not smart like you.”

“You know that's bullshit. You're smarter than me.”

You smiled at me, but it was a resigned smile, like you had given up. I should have seen that at the time, too, that you had given up more than just school.

“Would you come to school, at least?”

“Oh, Roo....” That voice of yours, the one you used every time I stubbornly fought for something impossible and futile. But you weren't futile for me, Sam. I wondered if you'd ever known.

“For me.”

“Okay, for you, but it's not going to change anything. I can't concentrate. I mean, school has never been my thing, music is.” A second, then two, before you whispered to yourself. “Was.”

I held your left hand, the way I did sometimes when we were trying to comfort each other, and you froze before you held mine back. I said to you, “I love you. You know that, right?”

You didn't say anything. You just kissed my knuckles as we both looked out to the serene lake. I think now perhaps at the time you were wondering if love could fix anything at all, because for years in your life, it hadn't, why would it change now?

*

**Friday, March 30 th, 2007**

You had been gone for days.

You'd never done that anymore, not after the first time. You hadn't been to school. You weren't anywhere we used to go to. You weren't at home. You weren't with those guys at school. You were nowhere.

The last few weeks before then we hadn't been talking right. Every conversation turned into fights. Our comfortable silence had turned suffocating and I didn't know when that happened, or why.

Perhaps I should have pushed you and asked you where you'd been the first time you'd disappeared. I should have. I should have asked you to show me where so I could come to get you when I needed to, but I was already standing on a thin ice as it was and somehow I knew that if I'd pushed you too hard you'd leave, so I hadn't because I needed you there with me.

“Rumon, get inside. Eat your breakfast first.”

My father had been home for a week for his annual leave, but you hadn't even seen him, Sam. That was why I knew something was wrong. You loved him. Just like me, you held onto the month when he'd be back. I was certain you'd heard about him coming home but then why weren't you there?

I stubbed off my cigarette on the ground and took the filter back with me and walked back inside through the back door. I should have felt awful. I smelled too much of cigarettes I'd been inhaling for all days you'd been away. It wasn't something new. I'd been smoking a lot since that first day I sat with you under that mango tree just so you'd have a company, but I rarely ever smoked in front of my father. I wondered then what he thought of me or if he thought you brought me a bad influence. I wouldn't want him to think that.

“You can't worry about him all the time, Roo,” he started when we began to eat the breakfast. Luce didn't even look up. She had been saying the same thing to me for months.

“I can't just turn it off, Dad,” I insisted. “Sam isn't—you know he isn't the most stable person around.”

“He isn't, but neither are you.” When I tried to protest, he held up a hand to stop me. “I know you both are really close. I know you love him. But how was your session with the therapist I'd told you about? When was the last time you play with other people who isn't him? Or do something that is not related to him?”

The conversation was a mirror of one we'd had ages ago and I didn't know why it irritated me, but I told him calmly, “I still do still life and landscape photography. I hang out with Penny and my other friends.”

“Outside the school?”

“Maybe not outside, but—”

“Roo,” he told me kindly, “you can't set a person as your whole world.”

I bristled at his words. I hated that. Hated that he thought he could come home and lecture how I wanted to live my life when he wasn't even around for most of it. I wanted to shout at him, saying that in all the times he hadn't been there, you _were_. But I kept my mouth shut because I also hated that I wasn't being fair to him. I knew he loved his job and I knew deep down he was right.

I almost jumped when he rested his hand on top of mine. I looked up at him, seeing him for the first time, the exhaustion, the concern; the years that hadn't been kind to him. In his face I could see myself, weary by life, hanging on by the thread. He said, “I'm sorry, son.”

I swallowed. “What for?”

“Because I hadn't been here when you'd needed me most. For leaving all the time. For what it did to you.”

And I knew, I knew he wasn't just saying about him leaving after a month, Sam, he was apologizing for the first absence after my mother's death. I couldn't blink away the blur in my eyes because my tears came unbidden with how much I'd missed him in all the years he'd been gone so I sobbed into my hands until I felt strong arms around my shoulders and surrounded by the flower-scented shampoo Luce liked to use.

There inside my dining room, in the arms of my only two family members, I felt as if I'd been freed from the shackles I'd been wearing all my life. Then, like everything else in my life, I thought of you, Sam.

Back in our seats, I heard Luce saying, “He'll come home when he's ready.”

I would've believed her if it had been some other times before, but I didn't know why I couldn't then.

*

**Tuesday, March 27 th, 2007**

We had been fighting the day before you were gone.

I wasn't sure if I should apologize. This whole letter—or book?—sounds like an apology enough, I guess. It wasn't like it was the first fight we'd had. It was an on-going fight we had every once in a while throughout the years; about your tendency to shut people out, about your drinking problem because some days you'd drink too much too fast, about your unwillingness to talk it through with me, about your family, about your debilitating sadness, about our helplessness, about your hanging out with the wrong crowd just so you could get away from me. It was the same things over and over again.

But I should have noticed something was different. Something about you was different. You had been giving me favorite things of yours. You had been vacant more often than not when we were together. Sometimes you talked about something you liked wistfully, as if it would be the last time you'd ever done it. You never got to tell me everything you'd talked about with your father the last time he'd been here, only that you also mentioned about your sexuality and your relationship with me. Your eyes were haunted, more than they had been before. Sometimes I looked at you and realized no one was home. You were away, buried deep inside your mind, and I worried, Sam.

So, the difference in the fight was, after talking about your drinking issue, that I offered to accompany you to see a professional.

“See what?”

From the way your eyes blazing, I knew perhaps I'd taken the wrong way to talk about it. “Therapist. My therapist—I mean we could—”

“Roo, what the fuck?” you yelled. “I don't need a fucking shrink! I'm okay!”

“Sam, you have a problem and I can't help you if you don't—”

“Who says I need your help? Or anyone's?”

I heard my own voice raising. “You obviously do. Why can't you just see it?”

“Oh, fuck you, Roo!” you snorted, standing up from your usual seat on the couch that I had to stand with you. “I'm fine the way I am now. I don't need anyone's help, much less a shrink, damn it! I'm not crazy like you!”

As if you'd just heard what was coming out of your mouth, I watched, as if in slow motion, the way your eyes widened. Your mouth gaped open and in a detached recognition I thought it was odd that you'd ever lost words when you seemed to have so many. I blinked, but it felt slow, like none of it was real. I replayed your words over and over again in my mind and something inside me twisted so painfully I couldn't breathe right.

“Roo.” Long, strong hands, reaching out to me. Tousled shaggy blond hair you'd never quite styled again for months. Thin pale pink lips. Wide hazel eyes which seemed to draw me in again and again. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean that—you know, I don't—”

I didn't notice that I took a step back, from your hands, from your pleading eyes, from you. I flinched when you touched me and I couldn't breathe. I recalled every time I'd told you about my nightmares. How frustrating it was that it never stopped, how sometimes I'd sleepwalk and you'd guide me back into my room, how hard it was for me to sleep some nights even when I was tired, about the forest fire and blood in my hands. I remembered your patient gaze when I'd told you everything and I thought to myself how I was content with having at least one person to understand what it was like to be me.

“Roo. Please. Forgive me. I—”

I took another step back.

“Please, I can't— _I need you_. I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have—”

But there must have been something in my expression, because I felt a tear tracking down my cheek and another one tracking down yours as though it was mirroring mine. Your face crumpled with so much loathing I had to wince because I thought it was directed to me, because I thought this was it, this was how you'd thought of me the whole time, that I was just a crazy kid with nowhere else to go, so I averted my eyes. I remembered your smile and your laughter, the way you'd stomp onto dry leaves in autumn and the way you'd run into a storm, screaming, screaming, screaming.

Your voice was a whisper, threatened to be drowned by the weight of silence. “I told you before.”

I didn't say anything.

“I'm not good for anyone. Especially not you.”

I couldn't speak. My words failed me. My heart was in my throat, Sam, because I remembered one time when we were fourteen and you told me what a gift it was to be held by me. When we were sixteen, going through another fight, and you told me someday my gentleness would crush me. I remembered when we were nine, you were crying over the death of another unattainable dream and you asked me how anyone could be that sad and still breathing.

I heard the back door closed quietly before I managed to raise my head. From the opened window I saw your back as you walked further and further away, your hair glinting under the evening sun and I should have called out to you. I should have held you, Sam, and told you it didn't matter to me, that I loved you no matter what you'd said because I knew how you'd be when you lashed out and I knew you hadn't meant it. I should have followed you, I should have kissed you and told you how wrong you were, that you were good to me, that you were worth everything.

But I hadn't. And it was the last time I saw you before you decided to end your days with a shot to your head.

*

 **Monday, April 2 nd, 2007** _  
_ _Late afternoon_

Cold, nondescript grey room with grey metal chair and grey metal table. The bulb right above me was too bright. I sat in front of the uniformed man, calling himself Sergeant Jones, with his kind eyes and greying hair around his ears. Apparently, he knew me. He knew my father. Sometimes I forgot what a small town our place was, Sam, so much that everyone knew everybody else. He called a name and I thought perhaps I'd forgotten it because of how unfamiliar it had sounded. I felt as though I was underwater. “Rumon White?” he asked. “That's your full name, isn't it?”

I didn't know if it was. I'd always been just 'Roo'. “Yes.”

“We're sorry about this, but we need to check some things before we can decide the final verdict.” _Final verdict_. How detached and clinical it had sounded. As if someone hadn't just died.

“It's alright.” My voice didn't sound like mine. It was just a croak. There was no trace of me anywhere.

“Okay. According to the report, you were the last person Samson Brown had seen before his death?”

I saw you in the corner of that room, staring at me the way you did sometimes, as if I was a puzzle and you couldn't quite figure me out. I looked down to your mouth. It was a mass of red, your jaw unhinged from its socket. You nodded your head. I replied, “Yes.”

“When was the last time you saw him before that?”

“27th of March 2007.”

“So six days prior?”

“Yes.”

He wrote it down and asked, “What did both of you do or talk about on that last day? Do you have any idea where he'd been in the last six days?”

I remembered the fight and your back as you were leaving. “We had a fight about his drinking before he left, but it was… I don't know. It's just a fight we have sometimes. I didn't know where he was going or where he'd been, no.”

“Did Samson realize that he was a minor and therefore shouldn't have drunk alcoholic beverages in the first place?”

It felt as if I was being choked, but my voice was steady when I replied, “He was well aware.”

Sergeant Jones wrote that down. “Did he try to contact you in the past six days?”

“No.”

“Not at all?”

“When Sam—I mean, Samson decided to leave, he usually did it to clear his mind for a while. I couldn't. It was never possible for me to contact him then. He usually came back before late at night.” Playing in my mind was the back of the police checking up your corpse, whispering to one another, _Where did he get the gun?_

He wrote that down then finally looked at me in the eyes. “How old are you, Rumon?”

A trick question. It must have been. Ringing in my ears was the loud sound of your gun, your soft apology, my scream. The night was silent, moon fat and full in the dark sky. A sharp tang of blood in my nostrils and the tip of my tongue. “Seventeen.” Just like you were, but I didn't add.

His eyes, Sam. His eyes looked so sad that I felt my eyes blur. There was a regret there, so much understanding that it made me feel sick to the stomach, as though he had seen this before and wasn't that just terrible, Sam? To see the scenes of your death over and over again? Different person, different boys, different faces? He said, “Your eighteenth birthday is in a week.” And I hated it, Sam. I hated it that he reminded me of how I'd get to turn eighteen while you wouldn't. I hated the breath I took in every second you had stopped breathing.

But I didn't say any of it. My hands curled into fists under the table, but I bit down the insides of my mouth until a metallic taste of blood came to ground me.

He looked conflicted then. He wore a face of a person who knew he shouldn't have done it, but he gripped me briefly on my shoulders, as if conveying how sorry he was and I found that I hated his comfort too. I wondered when I had turned into that hateful person you specifically told me I would never become. He cleared his throat and asked, “Okay, could you please tell us again the events from the start?”

I threw a glance at you, but you were no longer looking at me. Instead, I saw your profile from your side as you looked up to the lamp the way you did when we were eleven and you were playing with the sun rays between your fingers. You were clean, no dirt or blood on your body. Blond hair tousled like you'd just woken up from your sleep, soft, glinting under the light. You saw me looking and you smiled. I could almost hear your laughter.

Everything was shaking. The room, my hands, my voice, my fingers. That room was a confession box and my sin poured out of my mouth like poison, dripping black onto the neat grey floor, and you were my victim.

*

**Monday, April 2 nd, 2007**

Past midnight, the day had just turned into Monday, 2nd of April 2007, I woke up violently from my sleep because I saw something in my nightmare and it looked so real. It looked and sounded too real I had to fight the nausea that threatened to overwhelm me because I couldn't have it at all.

I didn't tell that part to the police, only that with my heart caught in my throat. I ran out of my house and stumbled down the steps with no shoes, running and running across the street, right to your house, right where you were supposed to be. I'd seen a note you'd left on my refrigerator since God knew when. I'd checked my saving account and I was faint because the numbers didn't seem real. I took a sniff of your T-shirt that I still wore on the nights I'd missed you too much. Days and days I'd waited for you to come home, because I knew you would, I believed you would, but I hadn't seen the resignation in your face, the defeated and exhausted way you'd close your eyes. I hadn't heard when you told me you wanted to get out of there, thinking that we could once we graduated, completely missing what you'd meant.

I hadn't seen your face the last time we'd fought, right before you walked out of my life right through my backyard.

Your front door was locked, but I knew your back door lock was broken—had been for a while—so I kicked it aside and I just couldn't seem to process what I was seeing at first. Why you were sitting in the middle of the cluttered mess of a living room, plastic tarp covered some of the furnitures, your head bowed down to your chest.

A black Glock 17 in your hand, wrapped tightly around your long fingers.

Something collapsed in my chest. “Sam?”

You lift your head up. On your dirt-stained cheeks were tracks of tears. Your eyes were sunken. Dark circles under them were too prominent. Already, in the days we hadn't seen each other, you looked much thinner. Exhausted, like everything was too much. Resigned, as though nothing mattered. “Roo?”

“Hey,” I croaked. My arms are open, my palms upturned, but I was shaking. I felt my bones clattered inside me and there was no other sound other than the sound of our breathing. “Hey, love. What've you got there? Would you hand that over to me please?”

“Why are you here?” you whispered. Your voice was scratchy like you hadn't used it for a long time. “You shouldn't be here.”

A ringing inside my ears. It was loud, much louder in the seconds I stayed. “Come to my house. What do you say? I can make you tea, with no sugar and no milk, just the way you like it.”

“You shouldn't have seen this,” you said, still whispering like you were talking to yourself. “I was careful. I was careful enough.”

“Sam. Listen. I missed you, okay? I missed you. Let's go home.”

Vacant eyes. No change in expression. Tears started to roll down your cheeks again. I felt mine wet like yours and as always my body understood faster than my mind ever did. I heard your murmur, “Is this a dream? It must be. It feels like it.”

“No, no. It's not.” Deep inhale, exhale. My insides were burning. “Sometimes we are awake, but it feels like we're not. It's okay, Sam. This is real. Everything—” I choked. "—everything's going to be okay. Just come home with me, alright?”

Tears. Why wouldn't it stop falling, Sam? Why wouldn't mine stop falling along with yours? “It hurts, Roo.”

“Tell me where.”

“It hurts. I'm selfish, Roo, I'm so selfish. I'm so fucking sorry. I just want the hurt to stop. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry.”

“It will. It will. We'll work through it like we always do. We're a team, remember? Everything's going to be better.”

Another tear. “Do you promise?”

“Yeah.” I swallowed down the scream that threatened to come out. “Yes, Sam. I promise. Have I ever lied to you?” I gave you a small smile because I had to. Because if I cracked, you'd see how much I'd been doubting myself and I couldn't have that.

But you weren't smiling. The hopelessness in your eyes didn't go away. I couldn't ponder what it meant, because that second, right at that second, you exhaled the breath you'd been holding, you told me, “I believe you, Roo.” and it sounded like you didn't, as though you were just saying your part of dialogue in a drama performance.

I couldn't ponder because, right at that second, you put the gun in your mouth.

I ran to you, screaming, _No!_ I screamed, _No, Sam!_ I screamed, _Wait, please!_

The explosive sound of the gunshot rang loudly in my ears and around your neglected house, followed quickly by a rush of blood that never seemed to quiet down. Red blood on the walls, blood on the plastic-covered furnitures, blood from the back of your head and your mouth. Iron, the smell of metallic so thick I could taste it in my mouth. I recalled the tragedy in your eyes, brimming with tears as you told me you were sorry.

My last words to you had been for you to wait, but you didn't, Sam. You couldn't wait for another sunset to pass. You couldn't sit there on your porch with the silence you'd come to know too intimately. You couldn't bring yourself to walk another step from where you were standing. Most importantly, you couldn't bring yourself to see me anymore because it made everything in you ache.

I tried. I tried so desperately to stop the blood, but I knew it was futile. I knew it was too late, because I was peering down at you and you were looking at the ceiling with eyes wide open. You weren't seeing me anymore. Your chest had stopped rising and falling. Towels upon towels. Me whispering over and over, _no no no come back, Sam, come back to me don't leave me, oh God don't ever please—_

I had seen your eyes in the millisecond before you'd pulled the trigger and I recognized the look like an old friend because perhaps your pain mirrored with mine, so I wheezed and sobbed as I waited. Waited for my pain to be over. Waited for the ambulance to come. Waited for you start moving again. Waited for you to come back to me.

Deep down, I've always known. If there was salvation in death, I couldn't see it in your eyes.

*

**Tuesday, April 3 rd, 2007**

You looked different, Sam. There, under the sheet, lying unmoving on the hospital bed with your eyes closed as though you were just asleep. Odd how there was no trace of year-long violence on your body, only stitches around your jaws and your head where the bullet had come through.

I reached out to you, tracing the edges of your cold face that I'd known so well I would recognize it even if I was blind. My fingers trembled when I touched the strands of your hair, damp from being cleaned up a few hours before. You were asleep. Peaceful after being drowned too long in your own personal agony. Perhaps, if I believed it hard enough, it would come true.

My eyes were so dry. I hadn't slept for two days, not even after interrogation with the cops and an emergency session with my therapist. I couldn't shed a tear. I couldn't remember when was the last time I ate. I thought perhaps I'd been in the hospital with Luce the whole time, but I couldn't be sure. I remembered her face, sitting outside the emergency room, waiting for nothing. A mess of blotched red and tears. She had been hysterical, my father had to hold her back.

“We're coming home,” I whispered to you, stroking your hair over and over. “Open your eyes, Sam. Open—”

My voice was gone, replaced by uneven breaths, and yet, still, you didn't come back to me, Sam. You didn't come back to me at all.

*


	5. PART III

**Part III**

The Little Seal Who Tries to Eat the Sun

*

**Monday, April 9 th, 2007** _  
_ _Seven days after you left, three days after your funeral._

I was the little seal and you were the sun.

I was so lonely and you were my only best friend.

Running around our neighborhood, I pictured you in front of me, Sam. Your back looked firm and strong, tousled blond hair glinting, hazel eyes sparkling with mirth, laughing, laughing, and laughing.

In front of me then there was no one. The sun was bright on the horizon, orange and full, preparing itself for a sunset. I pictured holding your face in my hands, kissing your smile, kissing the pain away, telling you, _my sun, my sun, my sun_ but you were not there and I was just an empty husk, cracking open. My memories spilled out like dry sands, out and out until there was not a grain left.

I'd turned eighteen that day and it wasn't fair. It wasn't fair because you were supposed to be there.

I crouched down the pavement with my face in my hands, choking back a sob. There was no air left. I didn't feel real without you. I didn't think I ever was.

*

**Monday, April 2 nd, 2007**

This part of the book is filled with the things you don't know, Sam, so I will tell you. I will tell you everything.

The day you did it, the day I'd called for an ambulance, your mother had been away, going to your father's family house for the weekend she hadn't yet come back. Apparently, you'd known about this. That was why you chose that day specifically, or at least, that was what I concluded from your words and a few pages of crumpled note I'd found in your bedroom later on. You were careful, you'd said. I wasn't supposed to be there, you'd said. It seemed as if it was a form of mercy, even though I could not understand why you would give them any.

Sitting on the waiting room of the hospital, staring at nothing, my eyes dry, with bloodied hands and clothes, the doctor told me the time of your death was 1.12 am. Luce and my father were there sitting beside me with Luce still sobbing violently into her hands and my father's arm around her shoulders.

The sound of gunshot had woken them up and with dread settling in their stomach, they ran across even before the ambulance came. They found me crouching right beside you on the floor, eerily still, unmoving with bloodied towels in my hands. I didn't respond when they'd called my name. I had no words left in me. Later they told me there was nothing in my face, as if I was no longer there.

Your parents arrived at around 3 am. Your mother saw me and crumpled down the floor. She bawled and wailed like a wounded animal, refusing to be held by your father as she wept. She was inconsolable. Your father looked stricken for the first time I'd ever seen him. There was anger there, but mostly just guilt. So much guilt, he left for the restroom not ten minutes in, leaving your mother on the floor. She was still crying and I hated that she was, hated that your parents knew how to grief only when it was too fucking late.

They didn't know that every time I closed my eyes, the scene played again in my mind. I jumped over and over again in my seat when I heard a gunshot exploded, my father had to calm me down before I got another panic attacks. So, no, they didn't get to grief over you. They didn't get to fucking grief when they knew nothing about suffering.

After a while, my father and Luce held her up. A nurse came to calm her down. I felt nothing but disgust at the whole thing. What was she even doing here when she was never there your whole life?

The doctor came out from the room and he informed your mother about your death. Her bawl was wretched and I was already so sick of it so I quietly walked out the hospital building and around the parking lot.

I stood at one part of the lot and thought, this was where I cried the last time you were hospitalized, when your left arm wouldn't move as it used to ever again. Another point and thought, this was where my father's car had parked when we were twelve and you were too beaten up to keep your eyes open. Another point and thought, this was where Luce had parked, driving illegally at fifteen because our mother's condition had gotten worse, crying the whole time.

Deaths. Always deaths in this hospital and it was as if I had to watch it over and over again, Sam, the way I'd failed to keep the people I loved safe. I wondered if you'd even known that I was real before you shot yourself.

Later, when I came back inside, I found my father speaking softly to your parents. Your mother had stopped crying. She looked like a wreck; blond hair a shade darker than yours matted to her scalp, on her cheeks were tracks of tears. Your father's arm was around her shoulders. His expression was severe, but he replied just as quietly, listening intently to whatever my father had said, as if he gave the slightest fuck.

I walked up to them and spat, “He wouldn't want his funeral to be full of people. He'd want it small and private.”

A sharp breath intake from your parents, but it was my father who said almost disapprovingly, _“Rumon.”_

 _“_ He told me that once, years ago. He made me promise to tell you.” And I hated that you did.

With a brittle voice, your mother asked, “Why would Sammy talk about funerals?”

I looked at her, at her blue eyes which didn't match with yours because you had your father's eyes. How gaunt she looked, sharp edges around her jaws and cheekbones, sunken eyes, perpetual exhaustion which never seemed to end. She called you 'Sammy'. I wondered then if she had ever called you that right to your face because I remembered when you'd told me once that they used to call you that. Your voice had suggested that they never did anymore.

Since I was mean, I wanted to tell her, “Because he had wanted to die for a long time.” And I knew it to be true. I was just too blind to see.

But I didn't say anything else. I left the hospital building without looking back, unwilling to listen to her crying anymore.

*

**Wednesday, April 4 th, 2007**

_Two days before your funeral._  
  


Two days later, they brought you home. Another two days, your funeral was held inside the only church in our town. Four days were all they needed to prepare everything, which I found funny because of how fast it was. How fast the world moved on without you, as though you were only real inside my head.

Damian came to my house on the second day after your death. He looked disheveled and stricken, which was so unlike him that I felt disoriented again. He told me, “I was planning to wait. Wait until his physical therapy is over. Then perhaps we could start over his playing. I thought it was how it's going to be, but then he stopped attending the therapy.”

“He was mourning,” I said tonelessly.

He looked at me, unshed tears in his eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, he was.”

Penny came a little while after Damian had left. From how red and swollen her eyes were I could tell that she'd been crying. She had wanted to come to the hospital but I'd told her I hadn't wanted to see anyone, so the past two days I'd only curled myself in my bed, staring at nothing, except for when Luce or my father came in to convince me to eat.

I didn't know what they saw in my face, but I was certain Penny could see whatever it was, too, because her eyes turned into something softer and sadder. Or maybe it wasn't my face, more like the fact that when people saw me, they also saw you, Sam. Even when I played with other kids at school, even when we were separated more often than not the past few months, even when we only spent time with each other in the evenings, people still saw us as a pair. It was as if we had been born at the same time, right down to the seconds. So, maybe that was what their expression was: pity.

From my mouth came an echo of your words, “Don't look at me like that.”

“Like what, Roo?”

“Like I'm too damaged to be your friend.”

“ _Oh_. Oh, Roo.” She threw her arms around me and we stayed that way for long minutes, with her weeping into my shoulders and me drowning in the memories of your smile.

*

**Friday, April 6 th, 2007** _  
_ _The day of your funeral._

I was overwhelmed.

I couldn't register any words or any part of the funeral. At one point I was coming through the main door of the church then sit right at the front. There were words exchanged. So many words. Your mother's sniffs. Your father's wretched expression. There were only your family, mine, Damian and the people in the band, Penny and her family, some kids I didn't know. It didn't matter. It was just the way you'd wanted.

In my hand were flimsy pages of eulogy I'd never thought I'd ever written or read. I was in my best suit which should have been worn for our graduation. I don't think I'd ever wear that suit again, Sam. It's still in my closet. For my graduation months later, I bought and wore a new one. Maybe I'll burn it later before I leave. I have time.

Penny walked up the steps. Telling a story of how you both had met. Some trickle of laughter came from the audience. I couldn't register any of it. Something about punching you in the face. I can recall what it is now, but right then I was much too numb to process anything. Luce's hand on mine felt warm and real, but I felt as though I was floating, like I was watching a movie of myself, like not any of it was real.

They must have called me, because Penny had already seated back down with her family and some people watched me expectantly. I remembered vaguely that I had to step up and read my eulogy. My father and Luce waited for me patiently and I felt myself looking at them back, then down to the papers in my hand.

I walked closer to your casket, where you lay pale and cold as if you were asleep. I touched your hair, your cheekbone. When I looked up, you were there standing before me, glancing down at your own body with no expression on your face. You said, “You don't have to, you know.”

“I don't?” I whispered, almost to myself, because even then I knew I was losing it. My sanity as you'd called it.

You looked back up to me with an apology on your face as though you heard what I'd been thinking. “No,” you replied softly, “You don't have to, Roo.”

So I stood straight back up, leaving the papers of eulogy in between your fingers, and walked calmly out of the church.

*

**Saturday, April 7 th, 2007** _  
_ _The day after your funeral._

Your mother came to my house early in the morning, bawling on the couch where we used to sit watching the television and movies that made you laugh. I felt disoriented and odd. While Luce prepared a tea for her, she started to fill in all the gaps, the questions that you never wanted to answer.

If you were to ask me, Sam, I'd say I didn't give a shit about her reasons—or excuses as I'd prefer to call them. She told me that she had met your father in high school, both of them coming from a filthy rich family who had been feuding for generations, but the two of them had started dating behind their family's back. I was so angry at how so fucking cliched everything was. _Two feuding filthy rich families._

She then told me that she realized her problem at the point your mother had an addiction to drugs that she would never admit and that your father might have been drunk way too much all the time. It was so fucking stupid. One night they'd slept together and your mother had become pregnant at the age of seventeen.

Their family took the news with outrage, but your father was set on keeping the baby—you—without the family's support blah blah blah. And so they left town, bought a house in another town, it was good for a while until it wasn't. Your father drank too much, your mother finally admitted she was an addict, you were born premature, eight months in the womb instead of nine, named Samson because you were strong despite the odds and you were the light of their lives.

They'd been happy for a while, she said, but neither of them was used to living on their own without the help from their family so it turned awful real quick with the shouts and the fights. At nineteen, you were almost one year old, they decided to get back to their own family.

Apparently, that was where you had been living before you'd moved here. But even though you'd lived in the main house, you rarely ever met your parents, which was terribly sad, wasn't it, Sam? The pictures of them laughing was those years when you had been still in the main house with some babysitters while your parents met up and found that they were okay as long as they weren't living under the same roof and there wasn't you in the equation, but at that point you were already three years old with no friends whatsoever inside that big house. Ironic and so fucking depressing, but suddenly everything clicked. This was the root of your need to be alone, why at times you needed so bad to go away.

Their selfishness made my blood boil and my hands shake, but your mother didn't seem to notice. She talked about the happy days she'd spent with your father and the start of reconciliation between the two families, but it was still so frail. Things were heading to the better, or at least it was supposed to be. You were almost eight when they decided to try living under the same roof again. She told me this with wistfulness in her voice, as though it was just another sad memory, as if it didn't ruin your whole fucking life, as if no one died.

I imagined that first day you'd come, climbing the mango tree all on your own, how they hadn't come right away when you'd fallen. Maybe if you were there, you'd tell me to forgive them, but I just couldn't, Sam. How could I ever? I wanted to hurt her, to tell her that her selfishness took you away from me, to make her understand, but I didn't. I kept my mouth shut. I listened with my hands in fists, but I listened even though it wrecked me.

After the explanation, she raised her head up, informing about the divorce with tears in her eyes. I let Luce and my father talked. There was nothing I could have added anyway. Everything was about her, what she chose, why she did what she did. Not once she talked about you, what you liked, what her wishes did to you, what her weaknesses made you do. I remembered again the time I'd asked you why you could stand it at all and you said to me wearily, “I can't help it, Roo. They're all I have.”

And there, in that living room with your mother, I was furious. I hated those words for coming out of your mouth, I despise it even now because you had me, Sam, I swear you'd always had me, and yet, still, you didn't know. Now you will never know.

She looked at me after, and said to me, “I forgive you, Roo, for influencing my son in such way. I didn't like it, but I understand now that you both must have been lonely. Were there more girls around, you both would have gone for them, I'm sure. I'm just sad he didn't get the chance. He seemed happy in his last months though, so I thank you.”

Then there was this loud rushing sound inside my ears, like waves hitting the rocks in the middle of a mean storm. I couldn't comprehend past the fact that she thought that I'd turned your sexuality because she was too busy wasting her years getting drunk and high.

And happy in the last few months? Was she fucking _joking_? You had been miserable. The most miserable you had ever been in the years we'd been friends and this woman who called herself your mother didn't even know.

So, I stood from my seat, took her hand and led her quietly to the front porch. I smiled at her sweetly and closed the door calmly at her face. She didn't say anything, she only looked confused, but I didn't care much since I was trembling with rage the whole time.

Luce knew this, that was why soon after I felt her arms around me, and I breathed loudly on her shoulder because I was angry. You'd told me once after your father had gone that it didn't matter how long you stayed here, your parents would never understand so it didn't matter, and I remembered telling you to give them time, but right then I thought that maybe you were right. Maybe my positive conviction regarding your parents had been a stupid faith based on nothing because I remembered the years you had insisted that you had to fix it and I wanted so bad to believe that there was a way to ease your pain.

I was angry, so angry because even though everything else was shit, at least I wanted to prove to you that they could redeem themselves if they wanted to even if they didn't deserve it.

Perhaps you're right, Sam. Perhaps you were always right and you knew this even before you decided to go for good. All those months you'd spent away from me, drinking yourself to sleep under that mango tree, living days after days in-between uncontrollable rage and hangover, floating, alone in your suffering, not quite alive, mourning over the things you'd lost and the things you didn't even have the chance to have.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to scream at the unfairness of it because it was all just too fucking sad.

*

**Monday, April 9 th, 2007** _  
_ _Three days after your funeral._

There were several flowers, postcards, notes tapped on your old locker at school. I stared at them for a long time before leaving them as they were. People, students and teachers alike, sent apologetic glances my way. Penny walked around with me more often than not, not saying anything, and I appreciated her silent presence more than anything because talking exhausted me right down to my soul.

A teacher I recognized as one who used to yell at you for fighting came to me with guilt so clearly plastered on his face. I knew what he was thinking even when he didn't speak because the thoughts had been plaguing me too. I told him, “It wasn't your fault, sir. You only wanted the best for him. He'd known the whole time.”

He looked tiny bit surprised before all of his emotions were wiped clean, hidden under a blank mask. His tone was tinted with regret when he gripped my shoulder firmly and said, “I'm terribly sorry for your loss, Rumon.”

He didn't say you were a good boy, that you'd been a good student or any bullshit adults liked to tell you. I knew he wouldn't tell the things he didn't believe and I knew no one else there had known that side of you. Only I had. Me. Not for the first time, Sam, I felt so alone in the world where nobody seemed to know you, but I accepted his sympathy as it was.

My sessions with my therapist hadn't been going well and she looked almost concerned. I had been coming every day but I barely talked. Mostly she asked things and I'd be playing with the things in her office. She was patient about it. Somehow it reminded me of myself when I was with you, Sam, but I'd never tell her that. I'd never tell anyone that.

“Do you think Sam was a toxic friend, Rumon?”

My hand gripping her tiny dog statue until my fingers white, I bristled at my seat, but I said calmly, “Never.”

“Even though from your stories in our other sessions he seemed to be absent when you needed him?”

“That's bullshit, Doc. He was always where I needed him to be.” And I said to myself, _easy, easy._ I couldn't recognize myself on those days. I can control myself better now, Sam, but those first weeks after your death I almost couldn't recognize myself. I had been bitter, vicious, angry, and hateful. I would look back now and think, who was this person?

“Even when he was too deep inside his head?”

I gritted my teeth. “I didn't need him to do anything. I just needed him to be there. It was enough.”

She studied me from across the table and sometimes I disliked it when she did. But I felt my body relaxing, back to the numbness I came to be familiar with in the few minutes of silence, until she said, “No one here is trying to blame Sam for anything, Roo.”

“It's because everyone talks as if they know him when they fucking don't!” I shouted angrily. “None of them knows him, not like I do—” My voice caught at the end of the sentence.

“How does that make you feel?”

I didn't say anything. I didn't even look at her.

“Angry? Sad?”

I still didn't say anything.

“Lonely?”

I tensed.

She noticed. Of course, she did. “Loyalty, Rumon, is a very wonderful trait and I'm going to say this because it seems to me that you often forget, you are a great young man and anyone who has your loyalty is a lucky person.”

I knew what she was trying to say, so I didn't say anything.

“How's your sleep? Still with the same nightmares?”

I didn't tell her the usual nightmares didn't come as much as the sound of your gunshot. It was hard for me to sleep. I barely slept for three hours a night. Sometimes I woke up in a place I didn't know, my body was covered in cold sweat and I couldn't quite breathe as I should. Sometimes I saw things which were not there. Sometimes I saw you in clean T-shirt and jeans under the mango tree. Sometimes I saw you in my living room covered in blood. Sometimes I found myself running to your house thinking I needed to stop you from shooting yourself, forgetting that you already had.

I didn't tell her any of it. I said instead, “Some.”

“Do you think you'll be free next Tuesday?”

I felt a pang of remorse then, and a little bit of disappointment toward myself because that would only mean another session I had to attend in silence. To be completely honest with you, Sam, at the time it was hard for me to think that the sessions had been working at all. I had been attending regularly for almost three years at that point, but not much had changed. Usually, it didn't matter if it did or didn't. Mostly, I just wanted to talk about the forest fire to someone else other than you because I knew you hated it.

“It's off the record,” she added, and I had to look up to figure out what she actually meant, but she was just giving me that soft smile. “I just want to show you something.”

I still wasn't sure. It must have been written all over my face because next she said, “My father died in a car accident when I was sixteen.” I blinked at her in surprise. “It was snowing and the road was slippery so his car swerved down a cliff. He didn't make it.”

“I...I'm sorry about your loss.”

Her smile turned sad. “Me too. I was lonely in my grief, especially when deep down I knew it was suicide.”

I couldn't hear anything other than the harsh breathing coming out of my nose.

Her bright smile was back in the next second. “Next Tuesday. Please come around 6 pm.”

*

**Wednesday, April 11 th, 2007  
** _Five days after your funeral._

There was a guy who kept throwing me a glance from across the school yard. I knew this because I thought I'd seen him at your funeral. I could've been wrong, of course, if I hadn't had a photographic memory, but I had and I knew I'd seen him there.

I didn't do anything to initiate contact. Instead, I waited. If I found out anything after your death, it was the fact that it felt more like someone had poured freezing water on top of my head than a wake up call. My split lip and bruising ribs should tell me something, really. I didn't realize how many of the fights you'd done was about me, and now that you were gone I was suddenly a fair game. Only more than two days had passed and already people had stopped giving a shit that you'd died. Somehow I found that to be hilarious, but laughing after getting beaten up never ended up well. I'm sad to tell you that I learned that firsthand, Sam, despite everything you'd done to keep me safe.

After days of sitting in the cafeteria with Penny and my other friends, I found myself feeling suffocated by the realness and how alive I was—how tragic that I was—so I started sitting alone under a tree in the school yard where we would have our lunch sometimes. Just the two of us, before we went to our separate ways again. Me, going back to the crowd and you, going back to the dark corner where no one could see your pain.

That day though, Penny followed me out, sitting beside me with sandwiches in her hand. I didn't know it yet, but she would start sitting there with me for lunch more often than not until the end of our school year. If she noticed my bruises, she didn't say anything. Not anymore, at least, because she'd stopped one or two fights of mine before and right when she'd started fussing over me, I'd yelled, _Shut the fuck up, Penny. Just leave me alone!_ The way she had looked, Sam, how shocked and hurt she was, how she tried to cover that up, still, as though I didn't know her well enough to read it anyway. I still want to wince when I remember those times.

I think perhaps that's exactly how you felt like all those years ago you began to drift away. Loss could make a monster out of people and the worst part of it was that I could practically feel myself slowly turning into one.

But Penny, she'd always known and she stayed anyway. I knew why she was out there with me, not with the other kids inside. Part of it was her loyalty to me, part of it because she knew you, like, really knew you, at least until before you had your arm broken when we were fifteen. She said to me, tears in her voice, “I missed him sometimes. We never even really talked anymore. I mean, he hated me. I can't imagine how it probably feels for you.”

I ignored last part. “He didn't hate you, Penny.” I paused. “It's just...Sam divided people into only two groups: the ones he cared about and....”

“The ones he didn't give a shit about, I know, I'm in the second group.” When I started to open my mouth, Penny brushed it off with a shrug and a small smile. “Don't apologize for him, Roo, I'd known for a long time. I just—sometimes I wish it could be different.”

The thing about her, Sam, was that she would absolutely have stayed with you as your friend if only you'd let her, but you hadn't. I wondered what it felt like; to be mourning over someone who didn't care about you. It was painful to even think about.

“I'd tried telling him,” I started, “many times before but he didn't believe me.”

She let out a scoff but it was sad and tinted by anger. “Look at his parents, Roo. Who would ever trust anyone else with parents like his?”

I looked at her in the eyes, not saying anything.

“What?” She laughed. “You thought nobody noticed that? Everyone knew. It's a small town, for God's sake. Once or twice I'd wanted to call the social services, but you were there and I figured...” She trailed off as she noticed something on my face. For a second she looked surprised, then just sad. So much sadness that I couldn't stand it because I knew it was directed to me. “Oh, Roo...”

“Those people knew and they still gave him shit.” Rage vibrated in my words and I found myself shaking. I remembered the time you'd come home bloodied and bruised, cleaning up the wounds in silence. We would watch the television and I would kiss your face softly reminding you over and over again I was there because I knew some days you forgot and thought you were the only person in your world. There would be no more dinner dates, no more movie marathons, no more laughing and joking while cycling around the neighborhood. We were alone before but we would never be lonely.

Sometimes I still sat down on the steps of my front porch waiting for you to come out of your darkened house when I knew you would never, because you weren't there anymore. I'd walk around and found myself in front of Bright Night, still bursting with people, neon lights bright and blinding on the outside and I would leave before the music start because then I would be reminded if you were not there to play the violin then I didn't want to watch. I wanted the illusion that you were still somewhere around, only that you refused to see me, and that was okay. That was better than remembering how expressionless and cold you had been inside that casket.

We'd never get to go to the university the way we'd planned to, where I'd be taking photography major and you'd be taking music major the way we'd been talking about for years. We'd never get to travel around the world with just my camera and your violin, out and out from this town and your wretched house. There would only be me holding your hand in some other place that would accept us as we were and nothing else would matter. You told me once that you wanted to see Finland and though it was so far from New Zealand, I thought it was great, that you were great, that we were always good when we were together. Nothing else mattered. Nothing.

Suddenly, I wanted to scream. I wanted to scream at your parents, I wanted to scream at the other kids for all the stupid fucking slurs and mocking words and fists to the face, I wanted to scream at the world, I wanted to scream at me for not trying hard enough, I wanted to scream at you, Sam, for not giving life another chance. Over and over I played it in my mind, questioning why, why, why did you do it? Why did you decide to end it just then? Was it something I did, something I said? Was it because of our last fight? Was it your parents? Your arm? Your life? What led you to think that it suddenly made sense for you to off yourself? What led you to think that I'd be okay if you left me behind?

It was so hard to breathe. My fingers didn't feel like mine. Though I could feel Penny's arms around my shoulders, the scent of her light perfume at the crook of her neck, I was still trembling with the thought that I'd never get to sit on the couch with you again, looking at you wearing my smile.

Your pale chest under the moonlight coming from outside my window as you were lying bare and naked under me. Your eyes shining with love you'd only had for me. Your soft grin, your throaty chuckle as I kissed the length of your neck. Mussed hair, the taste of cigarette in your mouth, your arms around my waist. What made you think that I would ever be okay living without those, without you to tell me that I was your home to come back to, that I was the only thing in your world which made it alright? What made you think that I would ever be okay alone?

Sam, tell me because I didn't know, who would I be without you?

“I'm going out of this stupid fucking town,” I whispered to Penny when she pulled back.

I felt her hand tightened on mine before she took hers back. “I'm going where you go. I'll tell my parents. They love you, they'll be okay with it as long as I think hard about my decision.”

“Penny, you don't have—”

“Roo, look at me. Look at me, okay?” Her grin was wide and wonderful. She said, “I want to. You don't think I'd ever want to be separated from a brother I'd never had, do you?”

I hesitated for one second, but it was a very small thing. I smiled because for the first time in a very long time, something felt right.

*

**Friday, April 13 th, 2007  
** _Seven days after your funeral._

Friday, the boy finally came up to me during lunch. He was jumpy, with sunken eyes, messy brown hair, and pale skin, and a flash of guilt came upon his face before it was gone as fast as it appeared. It was then that I knew. I knew why he was there, standing before me, his hands curled in fists.

“It was you, wasn't it?” I asked him after a few minutes of silence. Penny sent me a curious glance I ignored.

He looked up then, staring at me in the eyes, suddenly still.

“It was your place he came to every time he disappeared.”

I heard Penny's gasp, but my eyes didn't move from his. His face crumpled, Sam. He blinked so many times like he was trying to hold back his tears. Maybe he was. Grief wrecked his expression and I couldn't recall another person wore it that way other than my family and me.

A tear tracked down his cheek and he wiped it almost furiously, saying, “Yeah. Yeah. And I'm not sorry about that, okay? He came to me only on the days he couldn't stand himself and he knew I wouldn't turn him away. I was weak of him. I liked having him around. He knew.”

His words didn't register right away in my mind because they were a mess of choppy sentences, but when they did, I felt sick. I wanted to throw up right there on the school yard, purging myself from everything I had ever eaten just so the bad feeling would leave, but I couldn't because he wasn't finished yet.

“I swear to you, Roo, I swear we never did anything. It's just.” He coughed. “He'd known my feelings since he started hanging out with the other guys. Maybe I'd been staring at him for too long. Who the fuck knows?” He laughed but the sound broke in the middle. “He usually came with bottles and he would drink himself until he passed out. Sometimes he would ramble and yell. He never said why he came, but I knew, I just—I know, okay? That last time he was odd. I thought he had been crying, maybe he had a fight with you. I don't know. I just gave him a place to stay because I couldn't bear the thought he'd be wandering the street alone if I didn't.”

“Why didn't you come to the police to give statement?” Penny's voice was scratchy, like it hurt for her to talk.

He laughed hoarsely. “Are you joking? My house—let's just say it's full of illegal shit. I—I can't—”

“What's your name?”

He blinked repeatedly at my question. “What?”

“Your name.”

He hesitated, but replied, “Jay.”

“Why aren't you hanging out with the other guys anymore, Jay?”

He winced. “They found out about Sam crashing at my place. I didn't want to lie, so I told them, yeah. They didn't want to have anything to do with me at least until things settle down.” His laugh was hoarse and unhinged. “I'm tired of their bullshit though.”

“Oh, okay.” I could feel Penny's stare boring into me but I smiled at Jay and asked, “Why don't you just hang out with us from now on? I mean, if you don't have places to go.”

Jay was staring at me with a frown on his face, and perhaps if I didn't read it wrong, a bit of disbelief. “You'd let me hang out with you?”

I shrugged. “I mean, why not? It's not good to be alone all the time.”

When I glanced back at Penny, she was already smiling at me with a serene look on her face. I smiled at her back, it was shaky at best, but it was a start, wasn't it?

The rustling sound of Jay dropping down in front of me brought me back to him. His eyes were filled with unshed tears. He asked quietly, “You're not angry?”

“What for?”

“Because I'd never told you where he'd been. I mean, he'd asked me not to, but I could have just let you know.”

“Oh. Well, it's alright. I know how he was. Sometimes he needed to get away. He wouldn’t have let you.” I should have been proud of how steady my voice was. It was like your death didn't affect me the slightest.

With his head in his hand, he chuckled soundlessly. I couldn't see his face, but it seemed so heartbreaking I had to keep my hands to myself. It reminded me of you, how you had been those last few months. He said, “I hate that you're so good, Roo. I hate that I get why he's so awed by you. I mean, look at me. I thought I could fix him, make him happy, but how could I ever compare?”

My words caught in my throat. “Jay, there's nothing to compare.”

He raised his head, looking at me as if he was trying to find something. He must have found it because then he nodded and sat down, listening while Penny and I talked about little things. Our conversations were stilted and tense at times, but we talked. He didn't contribute much, but he was attentive. I could tell he was used to observing people because I was that way too for a long time. He smiled a little when I asked him questions and chuckled at the right places. The longer he stayed, the more he relaxed.

He didn't know, Sam, but in that moment I understood why out of all people, you chose him.

He fit.

*

**Sunday, April 15 th, 2007  
** _Nine days after your funeral._  
  


Sunday came like an inevitability. It was raining in the middle of the afternoon and weather was a bit chilly, but I sat on the chair of my front porch watching the leaves and branches of the mango tree in front of your house as they swayed, finishing up my pack of cigarette.

I heard the creak of the other chair as my father sat beside me. I almost forgot he was still there sometimes. He was always so quiet in his grief—it was his way, and perhaps only then I realized how much we were alike.

“Don't you think you smoke too much, son?” He didn't say it like he was judging me. Travis White never judged other people for how they lived their life. I suppose you already knew this, Sam, after all wasn't it exactly why you were close to him? He asked me that like he truly wanted to know my reason.

“It helps me think,” I replied, stubbing out the rest of my cigarette into the ashtray. I don't smoke if there is other people around.

“Maybe you've been thinking too much as of late.”

I didn't say anything because he was right.

A few minutes passed and still I waited. The wind was harsh that day, but it wasn't as violent as it usually was. I found myself recalling the day you came home that first time. Your head was haloed by the lightning in the middle of the night.

“I know it hurts.” I tensed. He probably noticed because his voice turned softer. “It's overwhelming, like it's crippling you, like it's killing you. You sit where you always do and imagine them walking around like they used to, except now there's only an empty space and a name you might never call again.”

I gulped down my grief, cherishing the numbness that came close behind. “It's like that for you, wasn't it? When Mom died.”

My father sighed. When I looked at him, I noticed how old he was. Greying hair around his ears. There were wrinkles now around his eyes. He was watching the rain, just like I was. He said, “Yes. But it was wrong of me to leave you both. I should have stayed.”

I nodded, looking away. “You should have. I mean, what if the children protective services had come when you'd been away? That'd have been bad.” After a while, I added, “But we understood why you needed to leave, Dad.”

“That's exactly the problem. At your age, you shouldn't have had to understand why I'd left.”

I didn't say anything because it'd passed. Nothing good ever came out of regretting the poor choices we'd made. I learned it the hard way.

“I'm considering a retirement.”

I whipped my head back at him. “What?”

“I could stay with the both of you this time.” He sounded fierce when he told me that, as though he had made up his mind.

Maybe I should have been happy, Sam. I should have had my heart filled with joy because finally, we were important enough for him to stay around, but there was only a pang of melancholy left inside me. I was eighteen and I was getting out of that town. Luce was almost twenty-six with her brilliant career. You were no longer around. He wanted to stay this time, but at what cost?

My father must have heard my answer in my silence because his sighs was rueful. “I'm too late, aren't I?”

I didn't say he was. Instead, I said, “I know what it's like, Dad.”

“What do you mean?”

“I know what it's like to dream.” It wasn't that I knew because I lived it. I didn't know if I had had my own dream to live with. I took photography because he loved photography and I wanted to understand why he'd left. I watched how much you'd adored music in this intense and all-encompassing love that I felt as if I was living with it, too. I didn't have my own personal dream but I understood. “I know how much you love your job, Dad. It's basically your whole life.”

His eyes were so, so sad. “But you and Lucy are my life, too, Rumon.”

I tried to unfurl the knot in my chest. “We get it. But we're doing alright. It's okay to do what you dream of. Not everyone can do it.” I didn't say you couldn't do it anymore, but the implication was there.

“I wish—” But he didn't continue his words. It could be many things. He wished he was around more when my mother had been sick. He wished he was around when Luce and I had turned into adults. He wished he was around to show you how it felt like to have a father who loved you for who you were. He wished he could be around to explain to us that what we were feeling was okay instead of having heard of it from Luce.

It could be many things, really, but there was no point in wishing for something which wasn't there anymore. In my hollowness, I would cut off all my regrets and watch them fall, scattering away with the rain.

A week later, he would pack his bags, taking one of our pictures together, perhaps one we had taken on our camping forever ago, and hid it beside my mother's smiling picture. He was as good at hiding his feelings as I was. I imagined him standing on a valley somewhere north one day, watching the sunset because it would remind him of you.

He touched my hand briefly before pulling back. “I loved him, too, Roo.”

I didn't reply because I knew. I'd always known. So I sat there in silence with him who had loved you as much as he had me, but you would never know.

*

**Tuesday, April 17 th, 2007  
** _Eleven days after your funeral._

I suppose this was the start.

My therapist asked me to come on Tuesday and I was expecting—I don't know, maybe another useless sessions, but when I saw her outside her office, she was grinning widely at the sight of me. “Roo! I thought—well, it doesn't matter what I thought. Are you ready?”

I wasn't sure what I was supposed to be ready of, but I nodded anyway.

What I should be ready about, apparently, was a semi-open group meet-up. She brought me to a coffee shop I had never been before. There were about twenty people inside, ranging from teen to complete adult around their thirties. Some of them brought papers, some just chatted with each other, some others kept to themselves. In front of the dim-lit room was a stage. I looked at my therapist, unsure, but she just smiled and told me I wouldn't need to talk today, just to listen.

“But, Dr. Quintana—”

“I'll be just Claire for today, Roo. I hope you don't mind.”

“Okay… Claire, but what is this?”

She grinned at me. Her smile was so youthful and happy I couldn't imagine the time she had ever been in my place in life. A person started talking on the microphone, bringing everyone to laughter. I couldn't hear what the person say, because the next second my therapist told me, “This, Roo, is slam poetry.”

I didn't get to ask more. The MC person recognized my therapist and asked her to come up the stage. I was struck speechless when she did. Despite every of our impulsive and reckless activities over the years, Sam, you'd know that I wasn't reacting well to surprises—that is to say I would open and close my mouth a lot like a goldfish, which I did.

I sat down to the nearest vacant seat before a man right beside me asked, “First time coming here, huh?”

“I—yeah....”

He smirked wildly. I noticed a piece of paper in his hand. “We'll absolutely blow your mind.”

Right then, Claire started reading her poem about daughters left behind by the swerve of wheels on icy road, her voice was loud and clear, her eyes sparked full of energy and emotions, and my mind was irrevocably blown.

Later when we were on our way back to her office, I asked her, “Is it always like that?”

She gave me a smile like she knew. “What do you mean?”

“The slam-poetry gathering. I don't know. Overwhelming.”

I felt drawn to her laughter and I smiled because I think that's how I am, Sam, how I will always be. I'll be happy when other people are. She said, “Yes. You think you want to come to another one?”

I didn't have to think about it. “Yes.”

“Think you want to bring your own to read out loud?”

This time I hesitated. Almost everyone there wrote a poem about someone or something they'd lost. I knew for some people it would feel extremely depressing but I saw the way they looked after they finished reading and it was relief all over their faces. “I'll try.”

My words rang inside me like a prayer. _I'll try. I'll try. I'll try._ They sounded wretched like forgiveness I didn't deserve.

*

**Thursday, April 19 th, 2007  
** _Thirteen days after your funeral._

I had to do something.

When I came in to have my ankle wrapped from falling off the mango tree, I saw a kid coming through the hospital emergency room rolling on a bed with bloodied sheets. He was crying silently inside as the nurses fussed over him quickly. His arm and legs were pointed to odd angles. Blood dripped down his head. Everything about him screamed pain but he was so silent, Sam, that it hurt. It hurt because it reminded me too much of you and I wondered how many boys in the world were just like you.

At some point he asked for his mom and the adult right beside him clenched his jaw tightly. With the boy's hand between his fingers, he whispered vehemently, “She won't be here anymore, kid. She won't be able to hurt you ever again.”

And that was the time, Sam.

That was the time I had had enough.

That was the time I decided I wanted to do something.

*

**Friday, April 20 th, 2007  
** _Fourteen days after your funeral._

I called my therapist right after I painstakingly went back home. Penny had insisted on driving me to and from school at the time. I had declined because, honestly speaking, I liked walking and cycling, but I suppose with my sprained ankle that wasn't going to be possible. Penny could be persistent when she wanted to and I was too weak to keep saying no, so I finally let her. I guess you'd have known the end result if you had been there, snorting in amusement, probably while saying, “Roo, really, you're too easily swayed it's almost embarrassing.”

“Rumon,” she greeted. She sounded distracted, but I knew how it was in her office during office hours so I waited until she came back to me. “What a nice surprise. What can I do for you? The slam poetry meetup will be on next Tuesday.”

“Ah, it's not about that.”

“Oh. Color me intrigued. What is it?”

I cleared my throat. “Do you have time?”

I heard swipe of papers and some things being moved, a door being locked, then complete silence. “I do now. What's on your mind?”

I never told her, but I liked it when she said that in our sessions. _What's on your mind?_ Like she wanted to know an idea I'd been mulling over. Not many people knew I liked to ponder about ideas, projects I wanted to do, considering the long-term benefits of them for me and people around me. I had never really acted on them though. I guess my father and Luce was on point when they told me I'd never done anything just for myself, I'd been so busy with your life that I abandoned everything else, but this idea I'd been mulling over since we'd been twelve and I'd been watching you lying in that hospital bed, utterly helpless.

I didn't want to feel that way anymore. “Am I allowed to talk about my major and university choices?”

“Roo,” she said patiently, “of course. We can talk about anything.”

“Okay, so...” Sitting down on the couch all alone again shut my mind off for a second. I saw a glimpse of you standing in front of the television, trying to change the channel. There was a loud sound of gunshot somewhere outside. I flinched.

“Roo?”

I cleared my throat again. “Yeah, I'm here. Sorry.” I swallowed hard. My voice was rough. “Flashback.”

“We can talk in my office if you'd like.”

“Yeah, I will, but now I just want to mention. I mean, before I chickened out.”

“Okay.”

“When Sam—” I coughed. “When Sam was still around, we made a decision that he would take a musical major and I would take photography major, like Dad.”

Her of course was soft and understanding, so I continued, “Yeah so, he's not around anymore and to be completely honest this has been on my mind for years, I just couldn't bring it up because I was afraid Sam would take it the wrong way, but I...”

You were looking at me now from where you were standing. Your face was void from any emotion. I knew you weren't real, but I wished so bad that you were, so I closed my eyes and said, “I want to be just like you, Dr. Quintana. I admire the thing you're doing. I want to take psychology major. I want to help people sort their minds and their emotions out, too.”

Silence for a beat or two before finally, “That's wonderful, Roo. I honestly think that you'll make a great psychologist if you strive to be one.” I exhaled the breath I'd been holding. “But you need to be sure that you're doing this for yourself first and foremost and not because of somebody else.”

I knew she meant you. “No, this is for me.”

“It's not going to be an easy journey, but I'm sure you can get pass it.”

I blinked away the tightness behind my eyes. “Yeah. Thank you, Doc. I haven't told this to anyone, not even Sam so I don't—I don't know why it's so hard for me to—” I choked on my words, trying to control my breathing.

“Maybe it's because this is the first decision you make without Sam,” she told me patiently. “It could be overwhelming.”

It was. It really, really was.

“This is a big step you're taking, Roo. I'm going to say it's an improvement.”

“Is it?” I breathed.

“Of course.”

“Okay.” I let my breath out again. “Okay, and I also have an idea. Just one more thing. Something I want to do. Do you think you can help me out?”

“What is it?”

I took a deep breath and explained to her about kids in the hospital, the abusive households and people who were keeping it hushed because they didn't think it was their place. I explained to her everything, Sam, from my reasons to how I wanted to help. It was a leap to the unknown. I was still eighteen. Many things could go wrong. I could imagine you scowling at me disapprovingly, not because the idea was bad, but because you didn't want me to be at the front of it all, a vulnerable place to get hurt, but I had to start somewhere.

When I finished, my therapist was silent for longer than the first time. I imagined her thinking about it, juggling between the role of a friend and a therapist like she sometimes did when she was with me, trying to consider which approach to take. Finally, she said, “It could work.”

“Do you think so?”

“It's going to be a bit hard convincing the other professionals and trying to find the investors for this project, I mean if it works out well. I do hope it does. That kind of cases have been one of the things I worry about a lot for years.”

I almost deflated, but I replied firmly, “I'll do whatever it takes.”

“You'll need to.” I could practically feel her smile through the phone when she said, “It's going to be hard, but that's why you have me around, Rumon. Consider me the first professional joining into your project. I'd love to help you out.”

I felt the relief seeping through the sound of my laughter. I didn't know yet where I was going, but I knew where I stood.

_*_

**Monday, April 23 rd, 2007  
** _Seventeen days after your funeral._

I told Penny next.

I found her outside the counseling room when I came out and limped my way to her. Her brows furrowed in concern, her lips thinned. When she brought out a handkerchief, I almost laughed because I used to do that for you, Sam and wasn't that just funny?

Penny scowled at me. “None of this is funny.”

I sighed. “Yeah, I know.” I winced in pain when she wiped the blood at corner of my lips again. At the rate I was going at the time, I would be surprised if you could still recognize my face. “I'm sorry.”

“You should have reported those assholes!”

“Not necessary.”

“Roo!”

“They're not important. Listen, I've got to tell you something.”

I explained to her what I wanted to do and why the way I did to Dr. Quintana. At some point she stopped on her track and it took me a second to notice she wasn't walking right beside me anymore. I gulped down my nerves and asked her, “Is it—is it a bad idea?”

She squeezed my forearm. Her voice was rough when she said, “No. No, Roo, that's a wonderful idea. Mental health awareness and sanctuary for kids in abusive household. That's—” She blinked back her tears. “Just promise me one thing. That you're doing this for yourself first.”

“Of course, I do. It's what I want.”

“I know what you're doing. You're not healed yet, Roo. You can't just ignore and abandon your own condition. Do you think I didn't notice? You need to focus on your health first before you start on someone else—”

“And what?” I bristled, pulling my arm away from her. I was shaking with my rage and I knew I shouldn't even have had it for Penny. “The more I sit around doing nothing, more kids in the world die in the hands of their family or friends or spouses.”

“But you're not sitting around doing nothing!” Her voice rose, echoing throughout the school hallway. Some pair of eyes glanced our way. “You're healing!”

“It's under control. I'm handling it.”

“Not good enough!”

“God, Penny, what the fuck do you want from me?” My anger boiled, spoiling over the rim of my bowl and I didn't know how to stop it. From outside my body I watched myself, how I looked so much like you, lashing out because I was hurting, but I couldn't stop the words. “I'm fucking sorry my boyfriend and best friend died shooting himself because he couldn't stand his life and he didn't love me enough to stay! I'm fucking sorry that I'm not handling it well because most of the time I'm thinking, _Why didn't he take me with him?_ I'm fucking sorry that everything is fucked up because I don't know who I'd be without him! What more do you want?”

“Roo.” And I stopped, watching the way tears rolled down her cheeks like they would never stop. She wasn't looking at me anymore. Her hands swiping her face like they could hide her from me. She said, “I just want you to be okay again.”

When she walked away, I was left on my own with the ghosts of what could have been.

_*_

**Tuesday, April 24 th, 2007  
** _Eighteen days after your funeral._

This is the truth that I couldn't write down before. Maybe because some days I still thought you were alive and I didn't ever want you to know this because I knew it would wreck you. But you aren't here anymore and I'm leaving in a few days. These pages will be buried deep underground just like you were. I will not look back again. So I'll tell you the truth.

The day you put the gun in your mouth, with me sobbing into my hands waiting for the ambulance, I wanted to put it into my mouth, too.

Watching your blood seeping through the sheets inside the ambulance I wanted to retch until there was nothing left inside of me.

The days I walked the hallways of our school surrounded by ghost I wanted to chase yours. I wanted to yell _Wait, please_ And add, _Take me with you, take me wherever you need to go don't leave me, please, Sam, don't leave me behind_.

Smoking on my front porch, watching the rain, watching the mango tree, I wondered what it would feel like to wrap a noose around my neck.

I went to every session with my therapist and she was looking at me with concern in her eyes. I knew what she wanted. She wanted me to speak, to let out this poison I had inside of me. I thought maybe she knew what I kept inside and that was why she wanted me to get better. But I didn't think I wanted to, Sam, because every breath I took without you felt like a betrayal.

The nights I woke up from nightmares and you were not lying there next to me I wanted to scream until my voice hoarse and stab myself so it would stop.

The nights I sleepwalked, like that night, eighteen days after your funeral, were the worst because usually you were the one who guided me back.

So, in secret, I kept a pocket knife in the drawer beside my bed on the days the pain was too blinding. When I arrived back home, I would clench it tightly around my fingers, reminding myself of the love the people around me had for me, every kind words and soothing touch, then I would put it back inside the drawer, away from my thoughts.

This would be our difference, Sam. You said you wanted the pain to stop and so you stopped it the only way you knew how: by leaving everything behind. You needed to leave and I didn't blame you. I wanted my pain to stop, but I'd find another way. I wouldn't inflict people what you did them and this would be the start, Sam.

My shame filled me with tears that didn't want to come out. Eighteen days after your funeral and I was in pain because I wanted to die, but I wanted to live more, Sam.

The worst thing was the fact that I knew you would want that for me, too.

_*_

**Wednesday, April 25 th 2007** _  
_ _Nineteen days after your funeral._

I apologized to Penny in the morning. I had decided to be more honest. Deep down, I knew she was right and she was just looking out for me because I couldn't seem to do it myself.

She just shook her head at my apology and I almost slumped, but she said, “Nothing to apologize for. We were grieving. We still are.”

“Doesn't make it right for me to lash out.”

“It doesn't. But I understand. I know you, Roo. I know what you're doing and I don't want that for you anymore.”

When I didn't say anything, she added, “Just think about it.”

I wondered again if this was what you'd felt like on the days we'd been together. If you came home to me because I was always the one with open arms.

Then, later, surging into me was the unbridled relief. You asked me once what my gift was and I think I was wrong to tell you about the photographic memory, because right then in front of me, I knew what my gift was.

And it was the people who gave a shit about me even when I didn't.

_*_

**Monday, April 30 th, 2007** _  
_ _Twenty-four days after your funeral._

I crossed the calendar date on my table.

The last day of April, I cradled the memories inside my arms; the ones in which we would laugh until we could not breathe, the slow and quiet days you spent at my place, the way you would glance at me and told me this is what you live for, the boring uneventful days when we would walk by the lake, watching the birds flew by. The last day of April, autumn season in which the leaves would crunch loudly under our steps. I held it inside me, I held onto it so tightly I could scream.

But no scream would ever make it stop.

_*_

**Tuesday, May 8 th, 2007** _  
_ _Thirty-two days after your funeral._

That day was weird.

If you asked me, I'd say things were getting better at that point. It was still horrible when I remembered it was already more than a month since you'd died, so much I had to throw up in the school restroom, though not quite so often anymore because it was the perfect place to get jumped and getting jumped was getting old real fast.

Jay looked out for me when he noticed what was going on and it helped. It was odd, really, that we got to be friends at all, but I remembered when we were fifteen, a few weeks before the incident, you'd told me that I had a way to make people who were supposed to dislike me like me. He frowned at me sometimes before asking, “Are you really okay, Roo?”

I rinsed my mouth. “I'm good.” When you appeared as a shadow in the corner of the room, I'd just close my eyes and breathe and I'd be good.

“I know it's not my place,” he said when we went out of the restroom, “but how's the therapy going?”

I personally thought it was getting better. I was a work in progress. Most of the time, I talked about my ideas for the project with Dr. Quintana and she would give me advices and more ideas. She had asked me to meet some colleagues of hers next weekend, so it was getting better.

But the last session she asked me to talk more about you and what I was feeling, so I just smiled and asked her if I could be excused for the day.

“Yeah, it's going great,” I said finally.

He scoffed. “Sell that to someone who's buying.”

I raised my eyebrow at him.

“What? I've known Sam for years. The way you evade conversations is the same as his. I guess now I know where he got it.”

That stung a bit, but I chuckled to myself. “Man, when did I start surrounding myself with busy-bodies?”

Jay poked my chest the point of his finger. His eyes blazing. He spat, “Maybe it's not my business, but you make it mine when you offered to be friends with me so shut the fuck up. Stop thinking you're not worth it because you are, and _do the fucking work!_ ” Then, as quickly as he came, he stomped away from me.

I blinked. Again, I felt disoriented, because his gestures spoke loyalty and care and I absolutely had no idea what I'd done in the few weeks before to inspire such emotions.

Three guys passed me by, chuckling. One of them hollered loudly, “He chewed you out good, Roo!” While the other bumped my shoulder good-naturedly before leaving. I was struck speechless, motionless where I was standing. I didn't even know their names.

Penny came out from one corner, grinning. “Roo! I've been looking for you.” Then, she scowled. “Close your mouth before a fly flew in.”

“Penny, since when do people know me?” Because I'd thought I was invisible. I had many friends, but I was never that popular people I didn't know would recognize me at first glance. Thinking that it might have been due to your death made me feel sick to the stomach. I was about to head back to the restroom when I found Penny's baffled frown.

“Roo, people have always known you. And liked you.”

“But they're— _friendly_.”

“Because you're friendly to them!” She laughed incredulously, still peering at me, trying to read me.

“I am?”

“Did you hit your head too hard or something?”

“But Penny—”

“Okay, so maybe they were a bit intimidated before when Sam was around, but they know you're a cool guy.”

It was the most absurd moment of my life. “Cool guy?” What timeline was this?

Penny threw her hands up to the air like she had given up. “You're a hopeless case.”

Did you even know this, Sam? “Did Sam know this?”

“Of course, he did.” Her reply was much softer. “Why did you think he let you go on your own at school? He didn't want to make it difficult for you. He probably knew he was a hard person to be around with, but you weren't like that.”

I thought of your nonchalant comment about us being a pair of lone wolves, being in love with silence way too much. There was an ache in my chest but it was dull, like it had always been there and I had only acknowledged it just now. “Oh.”

Penny cleared her throat. “Enough about that. I was thinking about the seminar you wanted to make. I think it could work.”

I perked up at that. “You think?”

“Absolutely.” She smirked. “You just need the most popular person at school to charm the way to the principal and the students.”

I thought hard about it for a minute. “Okay. I guess I could. Who is this person I need to ask for help?”

She gave me a look. “Roo.”

“What? I don't understand.”

“It's me, dumbass! I'm the popular kid in this school!”

“Oh.” When did that happen?

She snorted at me. Somehow that made me smile. “Yeah. _Oh_.”

Okay, so I must have had my head too far up in my ass for years not to even notice that one of my closest friends was a popular kid. I thought maybe everyone around me was on point when they told me that I had been too focused on you, Sam.

I felt conflicted. Had you been around, I would have insisted somehow that I hadn't been neglecting other aspects of my life. But you weren't around anymore, and little by little I saw the things I hadn't before. Most of the time it felt like someone was striking me with a club.

“Sorry, Penny. You know I love you.” She rolled her eyes. “What's the plan then?”

When she smirked, it was full of mischief. It reminded me of the Penny who used to give you shit when we had been younger. With her hands on her hips, chin jutting out in confidence, she told me, “Charming our way first, of course.”

I hadn't even been the principal, but, honestly Sam, I would have given her anything she wanted.

*

**Wednesday, May 9 th, 2007** _  
_ _Thirty-three days after your funeral._

“What's on your mind?”

I looked up from pencil and paper I'd been fuddled with the past five minutes to find Dr. Quintana watching me with a small smile at the corner of her lips. I had known her for years and still I wondered what she was thinking when she looked at me. I was always under this paranoia that I was never good enough for people to decide they wanted to stay around. I was always here and people were always leaving. It is how it is.

For a moment when we had been together, Sam, right after we'd started going out and we hadn't been yet at that point where you'd lose your identity, I'd had this surging wave of belief, that when I'd looked at you, I'd been filled with certainty that this—this here was someone who wouldn't leave me behind. Someone who was going to stay. Then I'd close my eyes and see the blood splattered on the walls of your house and wondered how I could have been so wrong.

Of course I didn't tell her any of that. I told her instead about the progress of my project at school, about Penny's help, and about the conversation I had had with my school counselor the last time. I knew which university I'd go and what I would be doing there. It was kind of late for me to re-submit my application for a scholarship but it was still accepted. Everything was going just fine. Too fine, in fact, that sometimes I felt like floating. That I was trapped inside this dream where nobody knew you and pretended you didn't exist. It was fine.

Except for the fact that I was still imagining you around me sometimes. Walking around in my house, lying in my bed, running across the street, climbing up the tree, cycling sometimes. The other day I found an empty bottle of vodka on my kitchen table and I wondered if it was an illusion or if I drank it when my head wasn't really there.

“Roo.”

“Yeah?”

“Please bear it in mind that I can only help you if you tell me your thoughts and what you're feeling.”

“I do remember.”

She was quiet for a while, which never meant a good thing. Then, “Do you still blame yourself for Sam's death?”

I curled my hands into fists, hiding them under the table and smiled.

She pretended not to notice. “It may not seem like it's true, but his death is not your fault, Roo. It's not about you. Sometimes people leave because they need to. Sometimes it's their sickness taking over them, ignored until it's much too late.”

The way she was saying you were leaving, it was as though you'd just gone outside the town for a while and would come back home eventually. Immediately I lost interest in what she was trying to say, so I looked out to the window of her office and watched the clouds pass by as she spoke of things I didn't care about.

What I felt right then is exactly what I'm feeling right now, sitting in my empty house, a couple of days before I'm leaving, writing letters to you. Everything hurt, it hurts still. I don't think it will ever stop. There's a hole inside my soul and it's shaped like you. Your absence lingers even in my subconsciousness. I see your ghosts everywhere and I wonder if that's my curse: that I get to remember you when nobody else does.

So when she ended our session for the day, I wasn't surprised. I never cancelled our appointments. I did all the homeworks: the journal, the photography, the slam poetry, the morning runs, the socializing. I talked in our sessions. I never lost my composure. In a way, I was getting better, but we both knew I wasn't in the essential parts.

Still there was sadness in her eyes right before she closed the door after me. And she tried, Sam, she always did, and I could never blame her that she did, that she cared about me. I wasn't angry when she said, “It's going to better if you talk, Roo. Unburden yourself to me.”

But that was exactly the problem. I just didn't want to speak. This burden was mine to carry.

*

**Thursday, May 31 st, 2007** _  
_ _Almost two months after your funeral._

I wasn't stupid.

If you were here, I'm sure you'd say I really wasn't. Which was why I didn't want to talk about my feelings, not if they had anything to do with you. Especially not about the way I felt about your suicide and where it left me, or how destructive you had been in the last couple of years which led to how destructive it turned me to be if I would’ve just see it from other people's point of view. People thought I didn't notice. That I was blind. That I couldn't see.

But I saw it clearly.

I could only imagine how difficult it must have been for them to tell me how toxic you had been throughout the years right then, almost two months after your funeral, with my wounds still raw around the edges because I kept on picking off the healing scabs. There was a certain unease in telling how bad someone had been for you when the person himself was dead. Suddenly it felt so terribly wrong.

Perhaps there was an unwritten rule to speak about a deceased person, especially if they were dead due to suicide: that you do not speak the bad parts, only the good parts. Such a bright and brilliant boy you were, they'd say because I was grieving. Altogether they forgave the fact that you'd been violent almost throughout your adolescent, as violent as the bullies who beat the shit out of me every a few days or so when Penny or Jay weren't around.

Forgotten was the boy of fourteen, punching another boy at school for touching him too roughly at one point after he'd warned them not to. Forgotten was the boy who punched his cousin in the stomach when they'd come over one weekend when he'd been fourteen, overwhelmed by jealousy from how normal they got to live their lives, how so unlike him.

Forgotten was the boy who'd wrecked his own room, splintered woods and shattered mirrors, upturned a bed and ruined shelves two months after the incident, crying and screaming so hard I could hear him from across the street. I ran there to find you crouching in your room, still shaking, still screaming like everything hurt you. Your mother was crying at the door, watching me, pleading me with her glistening eyes. But none of it was ever about her. Everything I did was always about you.

You only stopped screaming when I pulled you into my arms. It was awkward with your cast, mournful with how no matter how much therapy you'd do it would still shake and stutter. I walked into your room and I knew right away why you had been angry. It was the room you had been living almost your whole life, still looking the same even after you'd left it for good months ago to live with my family, untouched as if everything was the same—as if the only one who'd changed was you.

Forgotten was the boy who drank too much. You told me over and over you didn't get hangover headaches like other people. Alcohol calmed your nerves and helped you sleep, but there were nights you'd punch the walls until your knuckles bleed, nights where you'd scream at me to leave you alone, hit anyone who was too near.

Forgotten. Replaced by _such a poor lonely boy in an abusive household._

There were riots for a while, did you know? People marching together to show their hatred of violence because of your death. I was there in the middle of it because it was related to my project. I was astounded for a while by how useless it was. A fucking _march_ , as if it would you bring you back to life, but then I remembered my projects and I remembered it was not always about you anymore.

Some anonymous tips sent evidences to the police to pick up the case. Fuck knows where they'd gotten them. That was to say, to take your parents into jail where they should rot. But that didn't happen, of course, because a year after you started living in my house you'd told me again how reporting them would never work, so I wasn't surprised.

“Why?” I'd asked once when we were smoking on my back yard. It was always a gamble. Most of the time you wouldn't answer, or you'd explode then leave to cool off before coming back to apologize, but at that point I was so used to it I thought I had nothing to lose anyway.

“Some of Dad’s cousins work in the police dept. A great uncle in the higher ups, too. Not going to happen.”

“Oh.” Like it was nothing to me. Like it was normal. “So what do we have to do?”

You shrugged, taking a long drag of your cigarette then exhaled clouds of smoke into the night air. “Nothing to be done.”

I bristled at your nonchalance, but my voice was calm. “Don't you want him to pay for his crime?”

You looked at me with a small scowl. “Roo, he's my father.”

“Doesn't mean what he's doing was right!” I almost shouted. You were still watching me with a blank expression on your face. I wanted to yell at you then because you never seemed to understand that you were worth more than just a doormat he stepped on whenever he liked. And while you were already living with me then and he was never around anymore, a naive part of me still wanted him to pay, yet you didn't seem to understand.

You stubbed the butt of your cigarette off your jeans and flicked it at my face where it bounced back to the grass. No longer looking at me, you walked back into my house, saying, “Cool off for an hour before you get in with that vibe.” like you couldn't care less about your life or about what I felt.

I never told anyone this, but sometimes you were almost violently rough in our sexual activities. We were mostly experimental, being as inexperienced as we were in our seventeen. You were gentle sometimes. I knew I was always gentle with you because in my mind you were so frail that I was afraid I would shatter you. You hated that so much.

So sometimes when you couldn't stand me being gentle, you would sit on top of me, golden curls gleaming under the moonlight slipping through the curtains, moving up and down as I tried to stifle my groan. You were in control even as you preferred to bottom. I'd find your hands wrapped around my neck loosely, peering closely, as though wanting to see how I'd react. You'd asked once, “Aren't you scared, Roo?” Your hands wrapped firm enough to warn, but not to choke my breath. “It's going to be this easy.”

But I said to you, “No, Sam. You would never hurt me.” Then you'd release my neck as you kissed me like I was your air.

And you hadn't. You never did. At least not physically and not as permanent as after you'd decided dying was the only way to stop the pain.

I wasn't stupid. I wasn't blind. My vision had been clear the whole time. Even you had known how bad you were for me. That was why you left so much in the last few months before your death. Because you thought you were not good for me and you didn't know how to change, how to be better, and how to ask for help when you thought you didn't deserve it.

But, Sam, can't you see? I chose you anyway.

_*_

**Sunday, June 10 th, 2007** _  
_ _Around two months after your funeral._

I finally decided to tell Luce about my change of plans. It was Sunday evening and I asked her to have a dinner with me at home. As we ate, I could see her waiting. She wasn't as patient as me, but she was there and she had always been a more perceptive person than I was—at least right up to that point. I don't know how I am now, but I'm learning as I go.

I told her everything from the start. Where I had began considering the options, where the idea came from, the projects with Dr. Quintana, then with Penny and the school, the march which would happen in one or two months. Then about my change of major, university, the academic scholarship I'd applied for, then my plan on leaving this town for university. She looked sad at this part, as if she knew this would be me leaving for good, not just for school. I didn't say anything to acknowledge her unspoken sadness. I couldn't promise you that I'd ever come back here either. Too many ghosts and they all clung onto me.

After finishing my stories, Luce just sat there and studied me. I could tell then she was concerned, but she really didn't need to be. This was my decision. She asked, “Are you sure, Roo?”

“I am.” I imagined you sometimes, Sam, what you would've said if you'd been there inside that room and I found that I couldn't.

“But, Roo, didn't you want to take photography major before this? Are you—”

“Lucy, I know.” I put my hand on hers firmly on top of the table. “I'm sure.”

For a second, she seemed like she wanted to argue, but she held back her tongue. Her thumb was soft as she caressed the back of my hand before she pulled it back again. Clearing her throat, Luce said to me, “Know that whatever you choose to do, I just want you to be happy, Roo. Do your projects make you happy? To be a help for people?”

“Not yet,” I answered honestly. “But maybe.”

“I'm worried, Roo.”

“What are you worried about?”

“This is like—this is like you with Sam all over again.” She seemed unsure how to explain. I found how sweet it was, and yet in the same time how painful that this was still something Luce or my father or Penny had to tiptoe around.

I took pity on her. “What? Codependency? One-sided compassion without getting any in return?”

She looked surprised, then nodded.

“How long have you thought about this?”

“About what?”

“About how toxic Sam and I were to each other. How deeply, unhealthily codependent we had been.”

She was quiet for a little while, studying the abstract pattern of our dining table. Then, “Years.”

Then I couldn't stop it anymore because I wanted so badly to bare myself to her, to someone, to anyone. “Do you think I'm weak, Luce?”

“Roo,” she told me ruefully, “we all need help sometimes.”

And I crumbled, Sam. The walls, the whole foundation I had built upon, everything crumbled in a choked sob. I tried to stop the tears from coming but they rolled down ceaselessly, on and on, as though they would never stop. I whispered to her my last deepest, darkest secret, “It shouldn't have been Sam, Lucy. It shouldn't have been him.”

“I know.”

“No, you don't get it. No one does. It should've been me.”

“Roo, don't say that.” Her tone turned sharper.

“Lucy.” I raised my head. She was a blur to me. The whole world, Sam, sometimes it looked like nothing but blur after you were gone. “Lucy,” I murmured, “I won't live past thirty.”

“ _What_? Stop joking around! What are you saying, Rumon?” Luce choked on her words. I knew what she was thinking: our mother in the hospital bed, too sick to even walk to the bathroom. “That's not true. You've never been sick.”

“Lucy, but listen. I'm not going to live past thirty. I saw it. I've known it for a long time.”

She wanted to protest, I knew she did. I saw it in her eyes. I wondered then what you would have thought if I'd told you this before you committed suicide. Maybe you'd have been angry. Maybe you'd have yelled calling me a liar. But I didn't get to tell you and now sitting before me was Luce who loved me more than she had ever loved anyone else and it hurt me just the same.

“Why do you even think that?”

“I saw it in my dream.”

She knew. “When?”

“Since I was twelve.”

“That can't be true.”

“It feels real.”

“Maybe it's just a dream.” But her voice wavered. She'd known about my dreams. She always knew. She had been the first person I'd told after you and she had been the one who offered to accompany me to see a therapist in the first place, but this was why I couldn't tell Dr. Quintana why I blamed myself so much—because everything about me came from dreams. My dreams, my nightmares shaped my whole reality, even when it was related to you.

“You know it's never just a dream for me.” I sipped my drink. Parched from crying so much after months of dry eyes.

“That's not quite true. Your usual nightmares are always just dreams.”

“But the visions always came true. I saw it before Sam shot himself. I saw myself running. I saw him doing it.” It surprised me a bit how flat my voice was, how toneless, like it didn't affect me in the slightest. I recalled that night I woke up with my heart racing. How I ran across to your house.

“That means nothing.”

“No point in denying what would happen. I have accepted it for a long time. You should, too.”

“That's fucking bullshit, Roo!” She was angry now. Luce was always the explosive one. Maybe it was because she was the way she was that she liked you at all right from the start. She understood you when I couldn't. I wonder if you had ever known how much she'd loved you.

I didn't reply to her angry shouts, but I noticed when tears started falling from her eyes. I saw it when my mother was going to die. I told her about it, that my mother would sleep and the doctors and nurses would whisk her away. She would sleep inside a black box with white flowers surrounding her and I'd asked Luce why she kept on sleeping. I saw it when Luce was accepted in the university she wanted. I told her about it, telling her the exact date she would know and what she would be wearing that day. I saw it when Bright Night was going to happen and we were going to be there for the first time. It was why I was so insistent that day with Damian. Just a feeling that I got, except it wasn't, not really. So, Luce knew what I meant, she must have understood, if not believed me.

My visions always happen. Not once they didn't. They were as well being called as a fact. Unaltered. Real. Inevitable.

I said to her, “I was supposed to go first.”

She pulled me into her arms, clutching onto me tightly. She'd become small and fragile as we grew older. Her sobs were violent and painful to hear as she stroked my hair, like I was the one who needed to be comforted. “Roo,” she sobbed, “don't say that.” So I don't say it anymore after that even though I know it's true.

I didn't lie to you when I'd told you that death was easy, Sam. It really was. I was standing right before my own the whole time and I could never bring myself to tell you, at least not until the chance was taken from my grasp and here I am, writing it down to you.

When you asked me what my gift was, I didn't tell you of my visions, only my nightmares, because this one felt more like a curse anyway.

*

**Monday, July 9 th, 2007** _  
_ _Around three months after your funeral._

His fist swung fast across my jaw and I watched, as if in a slow-motion, thinking of how that must have been what you'd felt like months ago when you'd fought those guys at the back of our school's stadium, angry at the whole world for everything it didn't do to you, until you'd crawled yourself bloody to me. This boy, not quite a man yet, held almost as much rage inside of him as you had and that moment, the moment where his fist finally connected to my face, I decided that I _couldn't_. I couldn't hate this person at all, Sam. You were right when you'd told me years ago that I hadn't had it in me to hate other people. I would have seen too much to do so.

I suppose I should be grateful. He didn't mess me up too bad. He wasn't one of the usual ones and I wondered about that, why people suddenly used me as an excuse to be angry. His friends shifted around him, not quite know how to react. I could tell they didn't want to hurt me, but loyalty was an odd thing, it could make you do the things you didn't want to do just because you were loyal to the wrong people. Their uncertainty called out to me, reminding me of how I'd frozen the first time you started to throw punches to someone who looked at you a bit funny, thinking where did all of that violence come from and how come I didn't notice it before?

Long minutes passed and I painfully wretched myself away from him. His friends pulled him back, his nostrils flared as he tried to come at me again. I felt blood trickle down my nose to my mouth. I wiped it as if I could wipe your expression away, as if it wasn't already etched so deeply inside my memory.

I told him, because I knew this to be true, “Beating me into pulp will not bring your parents together again.”

There was shock, then I saw grief there, flickering in his eyes before it was replaced by smoldering fury. “What the fuck do you know? Someone like _you_?”

“I know enough,” I told him softly, “And so do you.”

For a second I thought he was going to go after me again, but his tense shoulders winced away from me, trotting past his friends to wherever he went to cool down when he wasn't punching someone weaker than him.

Then, I remembered you, Sam, the way some days you came into my house with bloodied face and knuckles. Your expression was hard as stone. The way you sat by me on the couch as I tended to your bruises, how you looked away like you were trying to hide your shame, or grief, I couldn't really tell their differences on you. The way you held onto me fiercely when I pulled you into my arms.

I tried to go home, but I still felt raw and weak, so I sat down on my front porch, watching as the leaves fell all over your neglected yard. Every reminder of you made me ache—it makes me ache, still—because I needed you there with me, Sam, and you were nowhere to be found.

I remembered the way you'd smiled at me after you'd played your violin in my ninth birthday. I remembered you so vividly when you were thirteen, as you leaned down to kiss me for the first time, and I was drowning in your sad, sad eyes. I remembered the way we lay down looking at the stars with you confessing that someday you wanted to play your music on a stage and as I promised you everyone would listen.

These pages were like words upon words in letters I wish I could have sent to you and God knows, I miss you, I miss the sound of your laughter, the curve of your smile, I miss the weightless way you jump from those trees and our swing set, I miss the sound of your violin that you'll never play again, I miss your company, your bone-tired wisdom, your thoughts.

I remember telling you once that I believed in my heart that things would get better, but now you'll never get to fix anything, you'll probably never see it, so I'm writing this to you, Sam. So maybe somehow you'll see that it does, because I believe it, I still do.

*

**Thursday, July 12 th, 2007**

You used to tell me that I had an odd penchant of making someone who disliked me to like me. I would tell you then that you were being ridiculous because that wasn't it at all. I didn't tell you I thought I was quite an unlikeable person for some people. I was okay with myself, but I knew some found me too quiet, too detached, too boring.

“Did you know that I used to dislike you?” you asked me from where you were lying on the couch. I think we were fifteen, weeks before the incident.

“What? No way.”

“I did.”

I frowned at you. “When did this even happen? We're practically attached on the hip since day one.”

You hummed to the ceiling. “A few days before I came to you with a broken arm the first time.”

“We weren’t even talking to each other before then.”

“Exactly.”

“Exactly what?”

You reached out to play with my hair for a bit, then lay back down. You told me once, long ago, that you liked my jet black hair long. I told you that it made me look like a girl. You asked me why, “Because you're pretty? There's nothing wrong with being pretty, Roo.” I wanted to argue, but I imagined that if we had that conversation and the role was reversed, I would surely say the same about you.

“Exactly what?” I repeated.

“You were so quiet. And after that incident, you didn't talk to me at all, except when I talked to you first. I just moved here so I thought...”

Talking to you was like pulling a teeth sometimes, Sam, did you know that? “You thought what?”

“I thought you thought of me as stupid. I thought you were judging me, thinking I wasn't worth your time.”

I laughed at you. “Sam, it's rude to assume.”

“Yeah, I know. There's not a mean bone in you. You can't hate people. You're not built like that, unlike me. Between the two of us, I'm the mean one.”

I was silent because I wasn't sure if that was true.

“So, my point is,” you continued with a grin, “I'm an evidence.”

“Evidence.” My statement sounded like a question.

“Yeah. Because people who didn't like you at first would like you in the end, Roo.”

I wasn't so sure if that was true either.

But sitting there alone with my lunch, with Penny worriedly leaving me alone after I'd insisted her to see the principal and Jay not being around all day, days after being punched black and blue, the same guy came to me again with his friends. This time his friends looked both annoyed and apologetic nudging the guy's shoulder impatiently. I was preparing myself for another fight, but what the guy said to me next made me think if you were right. He said, “Sorry.”

I stared at him.

He cleared his throat. “I said I'm sorry.” He looked back to his friends, who glared at him. “I was angry that day and you were conveniently there.”

I studied him like I would study you. “It's alright.”

“You shouldn't just say it's alright,” one of his friends said. “MD can be stupid sometimes. And you look like shit. Let him be your slave for a week or something.”

I laughed.

“I think he doesn't believe you, Theo,” MD's other friend told him.

“I don't know, Sean. I mean, he must've seen the mirror, right?”

“Not that, moron. I mean, slaving off MD? Why don't you just jump off a bridge? It's a faster way to die and less painful.”

I just laughed harder.

Sean poked MD hard on his stomach. “You broke the poor sap, MD. Look what you've done.”

“I didn't even hit him hard enough for concussion!” MD shouted in outrage.

I suppose I get it. As I sat there listening to them bicker to one another, I thought of what you'd said. The way you'd told me that I had a way to bring people's walls down, making them feel at ease with my silence. Being with me was easy.

I watched MD and remembered of how you'd been the last months of your life, how angry and distant you were, how you were isolating yourself. MD was so lucky to have his friends. He probably didn't even realize that he was. They cared about him enough to drag him back to me for an apology, that alone should be a sign that he'd be okay. I didn't know the guy, but it was painful to think that he could someday end up like you. I wouldn't want that for anyone.

“Why are you here alone?” Theo asked me curiously later. They were watching me and I realized then they really wanted to know. Surely, they knew about the circles of friends I talked around school. It didn't make sense that I would choose to be alone when I could surround myself with people, did it?

I smiled at him because I didn't want to answer. I couldn't. Because these people didn't know you, Sam, they didn't know that you used to be sitting here with me, they didn't know how kind and gentle you could be, they didn't know that you liked the quiet when it was just the two of us.

“I like hearing this.” I told them, in my ears was the echo of your long-forgotten words to me forever ago.

“Hear what?”

“Everything.”

I saw a glimpse of your smile on their faces and wasn't that just odd, Sam?

*

**Thursday, July 19 th, 2007**

MD, Theo, and Sean started hanging out after that.

Penny looked surprised at first, but she has always been friendly so she took it in a stride. She glanced at me sometimes and shook her head fondly, saying, “I’ll never get you, Roo.” I didn’t think I would ever either.

Jay was harder to convince. He watched them warily in our lunches while they were busy bickering with one another. So blatantly, too, it was bordering rude so I swatted his head. “Hey!”

“Stop staring and brooding in any chance you’ve got. Give them time.”

He huffed. “You’re being too naïve, Rumon.”

“I don’t think I am.”

“I _know_ them. Or at least, I’ve heard of them on the streets.”

“So?”

“So—bad news, not good, dangerous. I know,” Jay added that with a glare.

“Well, so do I, but they’ve been nice enough so far. MD is funny.”

“ _MD is funny_ ,” he grumbled with high-pitched voice. As if _my_ voice sounded anything like that. Seriously. “Fine! But if they or anyone hurt you again, I would burn their lockers and cars. Just you see. And don’t give me that bullshit about nothing happened anymore either. I’ve collected enough evidence to blackmail them into submission.”

I winced. “Jay, you’re ruthless.”

“Well, you’re hopeless! Just let me do this.” He seemed calmer then. His voice lower, gentler, like he did sometimes when he talked about you, so I knew what he was thinking. It was a bit funny to see how each of us moved and made our choices now, like everything led back to you.

So I told him, “Okay.”

But he really didn’t need to. Right after we all started hanging out together, the attacks stopped. I didn’t know what happened. Maybe it had something to do with MD street cred, who knew?

But at those last months at school, I had never felt so peaceful.

*

**Friday, September 7 th, 2007**

I was dreaming of the days we would play on those swing sets as the hours pass. You told me all about your music, about your hopes, about the games you played, about the kids at school, about your parents, about the things you liked, about what you disliked of me, about what you loved of me, about how you loved me.

I closed my eyes, feeling the breeze caress my cheeks. I wanted to stay there. “It's so peaceful here,” I told you.

I glanced at you when you didn't answer. You were already looking at me.

“What is it?”

Your smile, Sam. It was the most serene expression I had ever seen on you. “I'm always at peace when I'm with you.”

There was a dark void right below your swing set. You looked down at it like you were missing how it felt like to be there. You stared at it like how you looked at your house sometimes and I tried to imagine what you were thinking, but before I could think of anything else, before I could call your name again, you jumped.

I woke up with a violent sob coming out of my chest.

*

**Friday, September 7 th, 2007**

There are reasons why I don't write about this a lot and one of them is because I know you didn't like me talking about this. About my dreams—or rather, my ever-present nightmares. It had everything to do with the fact that neither of us could do anything about it. I got it. I didn't like to talk about it either, but there were days I wished I could discuss it with somebody else.

But since I would bury this, I would write it down here what kept me awake most nights. Why I could wander the streets at two in the morning. Why I started to smoke so much more as of late. Why I couldn't get any things done. Why I could be jumpy some days, while being completely unresponsive on the others. But you shouldn't worry, really. I could still function as well as the next guy. Some nights, the dreams didn't even come.

Other nights though they appeared. I still dream of that forest fire and wail in the middle of the night. I still dream of that girl with long wavy hair that falls down to her waist. I still dream of every conversations she shares with me, of the dark red blood all over my body. Maybe that was why I didn't flinch when I heard the bang, watching as you lay crumpled on the ground. I'd dreamed of tragedy too many times, Sam. They come along with me even as I'm awake.

Perhaps you saw it, too. When you opened your eyes wide and your mouth clenched shut as if to hold back a silent scream. I should have heard it anyway.

The girl in my nightmares was good with swords and knives. She wore some sort of long red clothes with intricate patterns and golden trim. She laughed a lot. Playful. Ambitious. Mostly she talked to me about mundane things, like what the cook would make for dinner or when her parents were going to come back.

Most of the time the dreams took turn into a confusing scenes of forest fire, crumbling houses, and blood. Explosions sometimes. I could hear her wail. I couldn't remember what made her so sad, but she was crying like her heart had been torn out of her chest and it left me an ache I could never ease even as I was awake.

In one of more peaceful dreams, I saw her sitting beside me talking about glory, but it was a repeated speech, like she heard it from somewhere else.

I heard myself asking her, “Is it worth it?” I couldn't remember what was.

She looked up at me, her whole body was so still, but she didn't say anything until finally she averted her eyes. If I'd known her well enough, I would say it was as though she was ashamed.

*

**Around March, 2006**

We were sixteen. You hadn't played your violin for more than a year and I found myself aching for it, for the sound of your music and the stories you would tell me afterwards.

When I got home, you were already sitting on the couch, head resting on its back, eyes closed. I reached out to play with the curls of your blond hair. If I leaned down to breathe it in I knew it would smell like the shampoo we had been sharing.

I kissed you at your temple and you opened your eyes.

“Hi,” you murmured softly.

“Hi.”

You hummed. “You have that look on your face.”

“What look?"

"Like you're sad because I'm playing with the other kids, leaving you alone.”

I laughed. I laughed and laughed even though there was a pang in my chest. I kissed you on your eyelids. Your forehead. Your nose bridge. Your lips. Then my tongue was in your mouth and yours in mine. There were hands on my neck and my shoulders and hands under your shirt.

Later, when we lay breathless on the floor of the living room, you pulled me into your arms. Your hand circled my bare back like you were trying to soothe me. You said, “I will always put you first.”

My mouth was dry but I chuckled. “Are you sure?”

Your kiss on my hair was firm, leaving no space for argument. “I promise.”

And I believed you like I always did, even a year later, right before you left me behind.

*

**Saturday, October 13 th, 2007** _  
_ _Six months after your funeral._

I was nervous.

No matter how many times I'd met real psychologists and psychiatrists and professors, or mostly government people like social services, I still got jittery and felt inadequate. They were the experts, knowing full well what they were doing, while I was just a senior in a high school in the middle of nowhere, with only ideas, stubbornness, and goodwill on my arsenal. That day though, one or two investors came along to hear what I could offer.

This was yet another seminar I had with the help of Dr. Quintana who was sitting right at the front. She nodded encouragingly. With the march being successful, the awareness being raised from school to school with the help of my school's principal and Penny, the events I'd attended in other universities the past few months, I was panicking of how fast everything was moving.

I'd gotten sick several times over the months because my body hadn't been used to how busy I'd turned out to be, but another week or two I became used to the four-hour sleep. I still went to school on weekdays so Dr. Quintana helped me out when I couldn't come or Luce would do it for me. After the initial reluctant about my decision, she'd decided to dive in with me throughout the ordeal. I'd asked her if she was sure because I knew how busy she was, but she brushed it off, “Might as well help you since I'm going to keep an eye on you anyway.”

There, right in front of those people inside the modest meeting room, I suddenly recalled that day when you'd told me you'd always put me first and how sad that it was never going to come true.

I'd studied about depression, then post-traumatic stress disorder which Dr. Quintana diagnosed me with after I began talking little by little, and a hell lot other disorders to understand more about myself and then about you. In the process of understanding myself I realized more and more that I wanted to share this with people, with kids my age or younger who didn't understand because no one would explain it to them, who were in denial with their abuse the way you had been. I was reminded again of my purpose and suddenly I was confident. We weren't the only ones who needed this, Sam.

As I began explaining, I remembered my family, in their sometimes achingly absent way, had always put me first and it was enough for me. I think this made me lucky because I knew there were possibly dozens or hundreds kids with the same situation as yours. I didn't want that anymore. I wanted it to stop. Your presence and absence brought me a question.

This was my answer.

*

**Friday, October 26 th, 2007** _  
_ _Six months after your funeral._

Just around two months ago when Penny opened her envelope with trembling hands. I remember my throat being so dry as I waited for her to just read it already but she was so scared of the result. I hissed at her to be quicker, then she hissed at me back calling me an impatient poop. Can you believe that, Sam? _Impatient poop_? I mean, really?

She read it.

I asked, “How is it?”

Penny glanced at me.

“PENNY!”

“I'm accepted!” she shouted breathlessly.

“PENNY!” I shouted back.

She jumped into my arms. I laughed along with her, giddy with her excitement, filling the cafeteria with our booming laughter. Some of Penny’s friends were hollering congratulations, some looking at us curiously. “Thank you, Roo.”

With a smile tugging at my lips, I told her, “No. Thank _you_. And congratulations.”

Penny sniffed. Her eyes were suspiciously shiny. She punched me at my shoulder. “Now we're going to go to the same university. Good luck getting rid of me, bro.”

At which point Jay came into the room, finding us laughing like a fool. He scowled. “Okay, who gave you guys the shrooms?”

It was quite possibly the best day I've had in awhile.

*

**Friday, November 2 nd, 2007**

Jay decided to do exactly what I’d suspected he would do. He had been cagey when I’d asked him several times before. That time though, he finally told me, “I’m not going to college next year.”

“Jay, that’s—”

“I don’t have the money. I’ll try in two years or three.” He took a deep breath before looking at me and I remember that day when he came to me to talk about you with defeated eyes. There was nothing like that anymore in him. In fact, there was fire blazing in him and I couldn’t stop the pride that surged inside me. We never did talk about what was going on in his place, but after this, maybe. “I’ve been saving.”

My words caught in my throat. “Yeah? Good. That’s good.”

“Of course, I want to go. I told you I’m leaving this cursed place.” Jay laughed a little then bumped my shoulder. “You’re such a softie.”

I sniffed. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“It is.”

“And I want your mobile number and email address registered on my phone.”

He grinned. It was all sharp teeth and mirth. It sort of reminded me of you. “Well, well, look who’s finally embracing the modern technology.”

I scoffed. “Yeah. Just know that if there’s anything or anyone needing my help, you know you have my contacts. I’ve been working on this project so my team could oversee the process of placing kids in better foster homes and help them get proper education. Just everything they need in order to get out of their abusive household. I’m not sure how long it will take, but I’m working on it.”

“Maybe.” He sighed. “I really appreciate it, Roo, but I….”

“I know. Just. You have me, okay?”

Jay smiled. He knew.

We talked until the school bell rang.

*

**Wednesday, November 7 th, 2007** _  
_ _Seven months after your funeral._

Your mother finally decided to put the house on sale. The divorce had been finalized since three months before and apparently she could not stand living inside that house. “Too many memories, too many ghosts,” she said a week ago when she came by our house. She was talking with Luce while I smoked at the front porch, pretending I didn’t hear a word coming out of her mouth because I still hated her with my whole being.

She got out our house without leaving anything of yours to me. I imagined there was nothing else to give since you hadn’t lived in there in the last couple of years anyway. When you died, Luce, my father, and I had been the ones who cleaned up most of your things in our house. We sent most of your clothes and your things for donation. I took a T-shirt and your favorite hoodie to hanged inside my closet. And your violin for my keeping. Nothing else.

She left your house the next day in her rich family car and I sat under the old mango tree right in front of your house with its cut off branches and bald leaves patches from finally being groomed weeks before. I watched the sun set. I imagined you were sitting right beside me.

I sat there for hours.

*

**Wednesday, November 7 th, 2007** _  
  
_

There was a day when we were twelve. We were sitting on the pair of swing sets at the park. I'd been talking a lot about the photos I took Sunday before when I had hunted things and places to take pictures of on my own and you had this soft smile on your face that I had to smile back. I asked, “What is it? You're smiling.”

And you told me almost shyly, swinging a little on your seat, “It's hard not to when you're here.”

Then we were deep in our comfortable silence until it was time for you to go home.

*

 **Sunday, January 6 th, 2008** __  
_Nine months after your funeral._  
Today. 

I am packing my clothes and my things to leave. I wonder if I'm ever going to go back into this house. Every corners of it is filled with the memories of the time I'd spent with you. It hurts me to stay. I still see you sometimes, you know, laughing at the television on the couch of my living room, even though I know you're not here anymore. I still have to go through the therapy sessions and my disorder is not going to go away so quickly. It's a progress. Please understand that I don't blame you for what you did, Sam, I just wish you were here.

I am leaving your violin, still wrapped tight in its case on top of the table of my room. It’s the only thing I can’t bear to bury with everything else.

Know that this is the end of my letter for you, Sam, because I intend to leave everything here, in my old house, and that means I am not taking this letter with me as I go either. I will bury these pages under the root of that tree at my backyard, right beside where we used to bury our time capsule. It's been more than half a year, the pain is still there, but I am slowly getting used to it now and I'm sure if you'd been here you would have told me to move on with my life already, so I will. After this, I promise I will.

The mental illness and abuse awareness program is going well. My mind is open with the possibility of making it bigger once I arrive in my new university. I am accepted in University of Victoria with full scholarship for psychology major, can you believe that? Of course, you can. You believe in me more than I believe in myself, isn't that what you said?

I went to the university twice in the past six months to do a seminar regarding my project. I won the best kickstarter project which was approved by a lot of professors and investors. I have been receiving calls from all over asking me for partnership. I don't know yet what I'm going to do next, but I'm thinking about it as I go. I'm sure you'll approve this choice. I could help more people this way, rather than following my father as a professional photographer. I will still do it as hobby. I'm not losing anything, I swear, I'm just choosing the better option.

The last time I stood right before those people who were so much better than me, my hands no longer shook. I stuttered once or twice, but I held my head up and talked, Sam. I told them stories: about people, about children, about ones who were hiding and ones who were overly upfront, about myself, then about you.

I told them about you, the good parts and the bad parts, as ones I'd written inside this letter and I swear, I swear, Sam, it felt great. I felt an enormous relief of telling them how you lived, how this way you will still be living inside their minds because somebody should know. It couldn't be just me. Someone needed to know how kind you were, how you think of my needs before your own, how lonely you were, how isolated, how you longed to have a sibling so you could relate to your family, how you loved unconditionally, how tortured you were, how you could be happy if you let yourself to, and most importantly, how human you were. I told them all of these—these memories upon memories which I kept locked neatly inside my treasure box, only to be opened when I was missing you too much.

I let them listen. I let them relate themselves to you and believe of second chances, or third, or fourth, however many times they needed. I didn't tell them what you did in the end. They didn't have to know, but I think it's okay if they do. Anyway, this was just how I wanted people to know you, Sam, as my strong and kind best friend, as how you were inside my mind, forever and always.

People stood for an ovation each time I finished talking and I watched their faces, filled with so much hope that I hurt, but I didn't let them see. This wasn't about me. This was about making something better for others, about making life better for people like us, like you, and I was okay with this. This was what I wanted, what you would have wanted.

Standing on that stage, I could picture you, Sam. Sitting at the back seat of the room wearing my smile, grinning that playful and proud grin of yours as you watched me. I could picture you rising up and it was so vivid that I felt like if I could just run to where you were I could gather you in my arms. I would tell you this was where we should have been. I would tell you to come home with me again and we would watch that superhero movie over a bowl of popcorn and laugh until our throats hurt.

You're listening? Hey, Sam, _Sam_ , are you listening to me now? Can you see me?

We made it.

We made it.

*

-END-


	6. Author’s Note

***

Before going to acknowledgement, I would like to urge any of you who have had or is currently having suicidal thoughts to keep your local suicide hotline in your mobile phone at all times. Or those of you who have friends with suicidal tendencies. Or every each of you, really. You never know who's going to need your help.

**New Zealand**

**National Helplines**

Need to talk? Free call or text 1737 any time for support from a trained counsellor 

Lifeline – 0800 543 354 (0800 LIFELINE) or free text 4357 (HELP)

Suicide Crisis Helpline – 0508 828 865 (0508 TAUTOKO)

Healthline – 0800 611 116

Samaritans – 0800 726 666 

***

Writing a book is never easy, but writing this book was especially hard. Other than the fact that it deals with difficult and personal subject, the characters inside **Wearing My Smile** are very dear to me. I wanted them to grow as person and sometimes that growth came from a painful experience. Then I wanted them to be happy. I wanted this book to be the best version it could ever be.

 **Wearing My Smile** would have never been done as well as it currently is without the help and support of the people around me.

Thank you to my editor and my friend, **Anastasia M. Intishar** , for all your help in editing and guiding me throughout the writing process. It was a roller-coaster process and I knew I got insecure sometimes but you were always patient. I adore you.

Thank you to **my best friends** \--you know who you are--for the endless support you gave me even though I could be a jerk sometimes (most of the time). And thank you for existing in my life, really. I couldn't have gotten a better set of best friends I could call as a part of my family. You are my inspiration for Roo. You all share a part of my soul. I'm so glad we have met in this lifetime.

Thank you to all **my friends** who read my stories and said, _"Are you kidding me right now? You call this writing of yours bad??? I'm going to punch you in the face because they're amazing goddamn you!!!"_ No need for hysterics y'all I'M SORRY I'M JUST FEELING INADEQUATE OKAY? HAHAHA. I love you, bye.

Lastly, all my thanks to **you** for reading this book till the end. It couldn't have been an easy journey, but you'd made it. I hope by the end of this book you could feel a sense of hopefulness because that's what I want.

This is not the end of the journey. Far from it. This is where you can start doing something, no matter how small. Even trying to live your life to the fullest and heal is enough. You are enough.

Be happy. Speak to someone. Give your loved ones the longest hug and tell them you love them. Tell them they deserve better things in life. Tell them they're good enough.

Love,

Anna.


	7. Upcoming Books

Roo's story doesn't end here.

His story continues when he goes to university, trying to find meaning in the things he does and his life in general. Even though he will still be one of the main characters, the next book's point of view would be from Alex, an engineering student of University of Victoria. But I still don't know yet when I'm going to finish writing it.

Right now I'm working on a 5-6 novels series titled White As Silent Snow, which is a fantasy series set up in a high fantasy world where some people are born with the ability to control elements.

It's told in third person POV of Clay Reene who finds found an unconscious boy in the woods behind his family log cabin. Turns out the boy has completely lost his memories and the only things he knows are that his name is Jonah and that he has the ability to control the weather--which makes things a bit difficult for Clay's family because magic is prohibited in their world and the discovery is punished with lifelong incarceration.

The story begins when Clay is fourteen years old and spans through a decade of his life. It focuses more on character depth and development, with loads of drama related to family, friendship, identity, gender, sexuality, guilt, dream, revenge etc revolving around Clay. And it's going to have a happy ending. I swear it! I'm sick of writing sad endings (haha)

Thank you for reading this far. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

See you in my next works!


End file.
